


your magnetic field being a little too strong

by pledispristin



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, M/M, Music, Slow Burn, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-09-14 04:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16906146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pledispristin/pseuds/pledispristin
Summary: Mark Lee is Korean, but he was born in Vancouver. He released his debut album two years ago after his first few singles topped the charts. He first started to get popular posting covers and original songs on Youtube. His second album was critically acclaimed fortruly showing his worth, not just as a pop singer, but as an artist. He’s been linked with everyone from models to singers to Korean idols.Donghyuck finds all this out within five minutes on Wikipedia.





	1. no one falls in love under fluorescent light

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to kaya and mils, who enabled me to write this and listened in to all my updates.
> 
> playlist for this chapter can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/shahdiae/playlist/03ETZxRNnCl47CC4cOGZsW?si=onJpS69LSGyUNqsHxURLpg). work title is from taylor swift's _gorgeous_ , and chapter title is from stars's _fluorescent light_.

Donghyuck is half asleep when the bomb is dropped on him.

It’s ridiculously nonchalant, with a hint of the snark that Donghyuck has grown to expect from his manager, but it makes him bolt into perfect posture. “I’m sorry,” he says, “did you just say _Goldfest_?”

“Yes,” says Johnny simply. “You’re playing the Discovery stage. Final act.” Donghyuck gapes, and he doesn’t even need to look to know that his bandmates have identical expressions on their faces. “And I’ve already agreed to it, so if you have anything planned for that weekend, reschedule.”

“Goldfest means,” Jeno begins, sounding in awe, almost reverent.

“It means that people who’ve never even heard of us might see us,” says Renjun. They turn to face each other, all of them slightly shell-shocked, and Donghyuck’s brain is running at a mile an hour. Goldfest is one of the biggest music festivals in the country—the Discovery stage’s final act is the most anticipated event aside from the headliner.

“If we’re the best people performing that weekend,” says Donghyuck finally. “Then this could be huge for us. If we get good reviews—”

“—we can be more than just another pretty-boy rock band,” says Renjun. His eyes are as wide as saucers. “This is amazing.”

Jaemin looks up with a frown. “You guys,” he says, speaking for the first time, and Donghyuck can see his mind narrowing in that way it does when he’s about to say something cynical and yet extremely sensible. “Johnny, who else is playing?”

“You’re the final act on the Saturday,” says Johnny. “And Odd Eye Circle are playing on the Friday.”

Donghyuck winces. Odd Eye Circle had broken onto the music scene that year too, with their moody vocalist and a sound that seemed both timeless and dated. They’d be a hard act to follow, he knows. “And who’s playing on the Sunday?”

Johnny hesitates. “Keep an open mind,” he says.

Donghyuck squints at him. “Huh?” asks Jeno.

“I’m telling Donghyuck not to be a snob,” says Johnny. “It’s Mark Lee.”

For a brief moment, Donghyuck is _sure_ he’s misheard. He shares a Look with Jaemin. “Mark Lee?” he asks hesitantly. “On—on Goldfest Discovery Stage?”

“Yes,” says Johnny.

Donghyuck stares, and then bursts into laughter. Johnny glares at him, but it only makes him laugh harder. “ _Mark Lee_? You must be joking.”

Johnny shakes his head. A pregnant silence falls over the group. “Well, at least we know we only have one act to compete with,” says Jaemin finally, laughing nervously.

 

Mark Lee is Korean, but he was born in Vancouver. He released his debut album two years ago after his first few singles topped the charts. He first started to get popular posting covers and original songs on Youtube. His second album was critically acclaimed for _truly showing his worth, not just as a pop singer, but as an artist_. He’s been linked with everyone from models to singers to Korean idols. 

Donghyuck finds all this out within five minutes on Wikipedia. He follows the link to Mark’s Youtube channel, hoping that one of the guys won’t walk into his room and ask him what he’s doing with his laptop open at two in the morning.

The first thing he’s surprised by is that Mark _still_ does covers. They gather a ridiculous amount of views, and a lot of them seem to have been filmed on his tour bus, or in a recording studio. The second thing he’s surprised by is that Mark’s covers _aren’t_ all boring acoustic songs that play in an unintelligible mess on the radio.

The third thing he’s surprised by is to see _his song_ there.

His song.

The song _he wrote_.

The song _Lee Donghyuck, lead singer of the rising pop rock band Girls With Dogs, had sat down to write_. _Donghyuck’s song_.

For a brief second, Donghyuck considers getting the video a copyright strike because this is _unacceptable_. That’s _Donghyuck’s song_. Donghyuck _wrote it_ —it’s _his song_.

He pauses for a second and then, hand shaking slightly, he clicks on the video’s thumbnail. _Mark Lee - Miss You (Girls With Dogs cover)_ , the title taunts him. That’s _Donghyuck’s song_ , _Donghyuck wrote it_ , Donghyuck sat down after his ex-boyfriend Jinyoung dumped him after high school grad, and it was dramatic and unnecessarily bitter and definitely an overreaction but it was _Donghyuck’s song_.

That’s what Donghyuck’s always done. He’s gotten himself into crazy infatuations that never go anywhere, or heartsickness triggered by watching his sister interact with a boy who was crazy for her, or an unshakable crush on someone who smiled at him the right way or on a moment that made his heart thud and his head spin and his cheeks flush. And then he sits down and he writes a song about the fluorescent lights of the school cafeteria or the asphalt in the driveway of his house or the cigarette butts behind the bike shed, and everything gets out of his system. It’s like an exorcism. 

Of course, this means that the world is convinced that Lee Donghyuck has either had a long string of lovers at the tender young age of nineteen, or has watched far too many terrible romantic comedy comfort films. But Donghyuck isn’t going to stop trying it. 

The song starts to play, and Donghyuck only has a moment to roll his eyes at the use of an acoustic guitar when Mark starts to sing.

And.

Okay.

Donghyuck can tell why people _could_ like it. He doesn’t. But he can see the appeal—Mark is fresh-faced, and his voice is clean, and there’s some kind of shiny eye makeup on him that makes his eyelids look like they’re glittering.

It doesn’t give him a free pass to bastardize Donghyuck’s song, but—he’s cute. Pretty, even.

Mark’s singing the edited version, the one that played on the radio and got rid of all of Donghyuck’s _fucks_ and _shits_. On one hand, he’s glad, because he can’t imagine Mark singing those in his Canadian accent and his flowery shirt; on the other hand, he’s even more peeved now. _Bastardization_.

Mark moves into the next chorus with a soft smile, like the song is a private joke between him and the camera, like he’s seen someone he loves behind it. (Let it be known that Donghyuck has never before felt so irrationally jealous of a camera.)

He scrolls down to the comments, half ready to leave a scathing comment about how he’d ruined the essence of the song and half ready to propose, when he reads the top comment, punctuated with heart emojis. _I know it sounds different but Mark is doing these covers for fun!! He's still the same boy he used to be after all, haha. GWD fans, please stop hating on him!!_

Donghyuck stares at that comment for a long time, before he backspaces and scrolls all the way down to the first video.

A teenage Mark sits in what Donghyuck can only assume is teenage Mark’s bedroom, light streaming in from the window. He’s wearing his school uniform, he has a little too much hair, and he’s shifting nervously as if he’s never been on camera before. “Hi,” he says. “My name is Mark, I’m from Vancouver, and I’m going to cover _Chasing Cars_.”

Donghyuck listens, and thinks, and listens. His head’s already halfway through supplying him a new melody, a few lines of lyrics, and he can hardly grab a notebook and write it down fast enough before he realizes that _Mark fucking Lee_ is inspiring him to write a song.

He stares at the notebook paper. The lyrics stare back up at him.

 _Oh, well,_ his traitorous brain says to him. _At least it’s going to be a good song._

 

Girls With Dogs arrive at Goldfest with a set of instructions from Johnny (phrased as suggestions, but they all know the truth) and a lightness to all of their postures.

They’d come to the festival last year, but it had been as viewers. Jaemin had dragged them to watch some Japanese rock singer called Yuta, and they’d set up their tent as close as they could get to the main stage, and they’d sat on the grass and split a beer and silently shared their dream of coming here someday too.

Donghyuck can’t say he expected it to happen so soon, though.

Johnny had recommended that they be seen at other performances, and with other artists, and that they take photos with fans. Donghyuck hadn’t thought there _were_ any fans, until he’d been approached by _Yujin, I’m a really big fan, me and my brother Hyungseob want a photo_ , and suddenly it was like he’d been struck with newfound celebrity.

It’s the festival, Donghyuck decides, listening to a frankly terrible EDM DJ who goes only by the enigmatic _Ten_. It makes everybody feel like they’re on top of the world.

He meets the girls from Odd Eye Circle before their set, and exchanges numbers with Jungeun after he compliments her vocals on their debut album; on his way to one of the stages, he runs into Lucas Wong, the rapper, who asks him idly if he wants to collaborate with him on his mixtape. (Donghyuck doesn’t even consider it, for the record.) He takes a photograph with Joy, the pop singer who isn’t a pop singer anymore, and Irene, the Instagram model who insists she thinks they’re _really cool guys_ and says that she liked their album.

And later that evening, after he drags the band to watch Odd Eye Circle’s set to take notes on what they should do better, they watch DBSK’s headlining set and remember all the times they played their music in Renjun’s garage back when they didn’t have a band but were talking about starting one.

“That’ll be us someday,” says Jaemin confidently, but that’s a little _too much_ to believe, and Donghyuck knows Jaemin isn’t as self-assured as he thinks.

“We should get a photograph,” says Jeno. Donghyuck turns to him incredulously. “What? We’re performers here, so we can go backstage.”

“What am I even going to say?” Donghyuck asks incredulously. “Hi, I’m Donghyuck, I cried listening to your music when I was in high school?”

Jeno rolls his eyes and grabs hold of his wrist, dragging him along. Jaemin and Renjun follow.

When they get backstage they see Odd Eye Circle, just recovered from their set, smiling profusely. Jinsoul is talking animatedly to a festival representative, and Jungeun waves when she sees Donghyuck. “We’re waiting to meet the band too,” she says, still a little breathless from her own set an hour ago.

Also leaning against the wall is Mark Lee, in a flowery Hawaiian shirt, every bit as pretty as he looks on camera and yet totally out of place next to Odd Eye Circle’s all-black stage outfits. Donghyuck stares at him for a second, and then glances away. Somehow—Mark was the last person Donghyuck expected to see here, and a part of him wonders if Mark even _knows_ their songs before he realizes how petty and unnecessarily elitist that was.

Mark glances at Jeno’s hand, which has a comfortable hold on Donghyuck’s wrist even now that he’s done dragging Donghyuck around. “Oh,” he says. “Are you guys—”

Donghyuck pulls his hand away, then realizes it’s a totally disproportionate reaction when Jeno stares blankly at him. (First of all, he wouldn’t _mind_ to be dating Jeno, other than the part where Jeno is more like a brother to him than anything else. And second of all, what does he care what _Mark Lee_ thinks of him?)

(Mark is _definitely_ straight. Donghyuck isn’t even entertaining the notion of anything else.)

“What’s it to you?” he asks abrasively.

He expects Mark to back down, or look away, or do anything but what he does, which is smile slightly awkwardly and duck his head a little bit. “Nothing,” he says. “It’s just nice.”

Donghyuck tries not to roll his eyes. He really does. But he does it anyway, and also adds, “Well, we aren’t. But is this where you say that you’re not gay but your uncle is and he’s a nice guy and so you support gay rights because love is love and—”

“That’s _not_ what I was going to say,” says Mark. He looks like he’s going to say something else, but then DBSK emerge and Donghyuck _has_ to get a photo. It’s a welcome distraction.

(Donghyuck really doesn’t want to know Mark Lee’s thoughts on gay rights. He doesn’t know why, but he’s pretty sure whatever he’d get would be downright _crushing_.)

 

They get called into a meeting a month after they finish the festival.

They’d spent the first two weeks of the last month on a post-festival high, after NME had called them _the standout act to watch for in alternative circles this year_ , and Donghyuck had written song after song about youth and nostalgia and pretty boys with guitars.

(He’d gone to watch Mark’s set, alone, without telling the guys. He’d been good—clearly nervous, but he’d had some kind of innate charm in his soft apprehensive smiles and the flowers woven into his guitar strap. Donghyuck thinks he fell in love with Mark for an hour there, before he walked away and realized it was just a fever dream caused by the heat and the crowd and the way the stage lights caught on his hair.)

The last two weeks of the last month had been a total rut, though. They’d been hitting a major creative lull, and Donghyuck had snapped at Jaemin yesterday and instantly felt bad, and he can’t get any of the _youth and nostalgia_ down on paper. (The _pretty boys with guitars_ is working, but Donghyuck throws all of those in the wastepaper bin anyway.)

But then Johnny calls them for a meeting, and they get an Uber to the building, and Donghyuck mumbles, “Sorry for snapping at you, Nana,” and Jaemin does an affected huff which means he’s already forgiven him. They get the elevator upstairs to Johnny’s office and Renjun asks, “What do you think this is about?” and none of them have an answer.

When they open the door, they see that Johnny isn’t alone. Mark Lee is there, looking very nervous, a jacket draped over his chair—as is a guy Donghyuck has never seen before, but who is glaring daggers at Johnny, immaculately dressed in a shirt and tie whereas Johnny is wearing a t-shirt (which, Donghyuck proudly notices, is official Girls With Dogs merchandise).

“Uh,” he says finally, when it becomes clear that nobody is going to breach the pregnant silence. “What’s all this about?”

Johnny forces a smile. “Donghyuck, Renjun, Jeno, Jaemin, this is Taeyong. He’s Mark Lee’s manager.”

Donghyuck’s brain rushes to try to figure out what exactly that means—or, more likely, what ridiculous prospect Johnny is going to encourage them to agree to. The look on his face, the grimace of resignation—it all looks like Taeyong has something that Johnny desperately wants but isn’t sure if he can get. “Hi,” says Renjun when Donghyuck doesn’t respond. “Johnny, what’s all this about?”

Johnny opens his mouth, but Taeyong beats him to it. “We want to offer the request to be the opening act on Mark’s tour.”

“ _No_ ,” says Donghyuck, all too quickly. Mark’s eyes widen slightly in something that could be anything from surprise to disappointment, but Donghyuck isn’t going to try to understand because it is _not Donghyuck’s job to psychoanalyze Mark Lee_. Because _Donghyuck is not going to work with Mark Lee_. Because Mark Lee is just some pretty boy with a guitar who claims to write his own songs but _God_ knows how true that is and Donghyuck—

Donghyuck writes his own music. Donghyuck pours his heart and soul into every lyric he’s ever written. Donghyuck has spent hours and hours of every day since he was _sixteen_ writing and making contracts and sitting in God knows how many meeting rooms and garages and living rooms convincing everyone that Girls With Dogs is a _real band_ , that they’re something to be taken seriously, that this is what he’s passionate about. He’s argued with everybody from studio executives to the other guys to professional producers to his own parents that Girls With Dogs is something to invest in. He’s argued his case so much that he ran out of words and decided to show them all instead. 

And Mark Lee thinks he can come in and take all that away from him? _Fat chance._ “You aren’t just going to tack us on as your headliner, like—like this is _charity_ or something.”

“Hyuck,” says Jeno softly.

Donghyuck spins around. “Don’t _Hyuck_ me,” he hisses. Jeno’s face falls, and Donghyuck freezes. “I’m sorry. But—but I’m not going to let us be someone’s _pity project_.”

Taeyong starts, as if he’s going to speak, but to Donghyuck’s surprise it’s Mark who speaks. His voice is surprisingly level—soft, but somehow commanding. It has an air of privilege, an air of _knowing_ his own importance, and accordingly, Donghyuck hates it. “We have different demographics,” he says logically. “You introduce yourself to my fans, and I introduce myself to your fans. It’s mutually beneficial to both of us.”

“I don’t—” begins Donghyuck, halfway through saying _I don’t need your twelve year old fangirls you goddamn arrogant prick_ , when Renjun cuts him off. “When is it? And where are we talking?”

“We were discussing the European legs of the tour,” says Johnny, almost warily, as if he’s not sure if Donghyuck is going to have another tantrum. Which—okay, he may have overreacted a _little_ , but it _was not_ a tantrum. “It starts next April, and continues for—for a month. Just over. End of April through May.”

That’s in nine months. Donghyuck tries not to panic. This is too big a decision to make on the spot, too big a decision to make without relying on his gut instinct, and he hates it.

 _I need to think about it more,_ he wants to say, but the words keep dying in his throat before they can reach his mouth, drowning in his chest before he gets a chance to say them. He’s a songwriter who’s not good with words—it would be deliciously ironic if it wasn’t just sad.

“How big are these venues?” asks Renjun.

“Arenas,” says Johnny. “Capacity ranging from about ten thousand to about twenty-five thousand.”

Donghyuck turns to the guys, and tries his best to pretend Taeyong and Mark aren’t there. “I don’t think we should,” he says, but the words come out too quickly in a rush of _Idunthinweshould_.

“It’s bigger than what we could support for ourselves,” says Jeno quietly. Donghyuck glares at him. “Not—not because we aren’t accomplished, Hyuck, it’s just—”

“Teenage girls are more likely to buy concert tickets,” says Renjun, and Donghyuck hates how logical he sounds, hates how everyone else seems to have made up their minds. “Mark’s demographic are just the type that sells out arena tours. Ours isn’t. We need to start being more smart, Hyuck, because we can’t just ride everything off one single.”

“So we’re going to be sellouts?” asks Donghyuck. “We’re just going to put out for whatever famous person is willing to take us, even if they’re—” He hesitates, then adds, “I’ve— _we’ve_ put in a lot of work making this band what it is. And people—people aren’t going to take us seriously after this.”

“We care about the band just as much as you do,” says Jaemin lowly. It’s the first he’s spoken since before the meeting started, and it makes Donghyuck realize that his slip up hadn’t gone unnoticed. He feels like his chest is drowning. “This is going to be a risk, but it might play off, Hyuck.”

“It’s just like a festival,” says Jeno softly. “Playing for a crowd that doesn’t really know who we are—trying to win their attention. You’re good at that, Donghyuck. Hyuck. Hyuckie.”

Donghyuck swallows. “Do you all think it’s the best idea?” he asks finally.

“You can take as much time as you need,” says Taeyong, but the razor sharp tone of his voice suggests he doesn’t actually mean it.

“I do,” says Renjun. Jaemin and Jeno nod in assent.

Donghyuck sighs. “Fine, then,” he says, trying to make himself sound more excited about this than he wants to be. “Fine. We can—yeah. It’s—great.”

Mark smiles. It’s the visual equivalent of a sucker punch.

Taeyong nods. “We’ll have to meet a few more times to discuss minor details,” he says, more to Johnny than anything else. “And, as we get closer to the dates, to work out a set list and stage design and all of that. I’ll be sure to work out a contract with the legal team in the coming weeks.”

“I’m delighted,” says Johnny, gritting his teeth.

Taeyong either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “As am I. It’ll be— _great_.” Donghyuck bristles at his own words being used against him, but before he can lash out with righteous frustration, Taeyong is standing up to leave, dropping into legal jargon to discuss some other thing with Johnny.

Mark smiles again at Donghyuck, and Donghyuck is fiercely reminded of a kid on a playground, shyly peeking out from behind his mother’s back.

He makes a point of not smiling back.

 

Nine months passes all too fast.

Donghyuck doesn’t tell his parents about the tour until literally the week that he’s set to take a shitty budget flight up to Glasgow to kick-start the European leg of the _Regular Tour_. Yeri knows, though—Yeri has known since he got out of the meeting, disappeared from the apartment to go drown his sorrows in terrible greasy pizza, and called her up ranting about not being taken seriously.

Still, it’s nice of her to pretend it’s news to her when he tells his parents about the tour, even if he’d caught a glimpse of pity when his parents had raised an eyebrow and asked questions like _are you sure it isn’t time to give this up_ and _are you sure this is what’s best for your career_ in their pleasant, accusatory manner. And it’s also nice of her to see them off at the airport—to grab Donghyuck’s arm and ask, “You’re not still bitter, are you?”

Donghyuck is definitely still bitter. In fact, Donghyuck doesn’t remember a point in the last nine months where he _hasn’t_ been bitter. He might as well be a lemon at this point. He’s been bitter since the moment Girls With Dogs decided to be the _supporting act_ for Mark Lee’s stupid guitar folk ballads. He’s been bitter since he opened up Spotify and listened through to Mark’s entire discography, wondering what exactly this _prick_ has that Donghyuck doesn’t. He’s been _bitter_ all his life, but now he thinks this is a new peak of bitterness, a peak he can’t climb down from without plummeting to his death on a metaphorical pavement.

He grimaces. “Of course not.”

Yeri sees through it, but she doesn’t comment—instead, she pats Donghyuck vaguely on the arm/shoulder area and all but shoves him towards the departures area of the airport with a shrill “Goodbye!! Send me lots of photos!! Especially of Milan!!”

 

Glasgow is a miserable city—or maybe it’s Donghyuck who’s the miserable one, because the others seem perfectly fine. They check into a hotel at six in the afternoon, and there’s a knock on Donghyuck’s door at six-thirty.

It’s Mark Lee, the bastard. Because of course it is.

“Um,” says Donghyuck eloquently.

“Is this a bad time?” Mark asks. And here’s another thing about Mark Lee that is _intensely_ irritating—the way he just seems to deflect every bit of Donghyuck’s passive-aggressiveness. Donghyuck thinks he’s made it perfectly clear that he’s not a fan of Mark, that he thinks Mark is a hack, and that he thinks Mark should take his stupid guitar and his stupid songs and his stupid fluffy hair and shove them in the pits of musical hell where he belongs. And yet Mark _still_ insists on smiling when he sees Donghyuck and being all _nice_ and Donghyuck almost wishes he’d start throwing things at him because he’s pretty sure he deserves it and he’s pretty sure he wants an excuse to throw things back.

“Yes,” says Donghyuck curtly.

“Oh,” says Mark, and then, undeterred—“Because I was hoping we could, like, celebrate. Celebrate the tour starting tomorrow, I mean.” He smiles. “It’s exciting, huh?”

 _Not at all,_ Donghyuck thinks on impulse. But—then. It _is_ exciting. An arena tour is an arena tour, their Spotify streams have increased greatly since the announcement of the tour, and he’s sure that at least _some_ of the audience are there to see the opening act. The O2 Arena is on the tour list. The _O-fucking-two_.

“It’s pretty cool,” he says finally.

“Well, if you’re free,” says Mark.

Donghyuck’s eyes narrow. “What are you suggesting?” he asks. “Mark Lee, everybody’s favourite pop boy with a guitar—what, do you regularly go clubbing in cities you aren’t familiar with, or is this just a one-time thing?”

Mark rolls his eyes—it’s the closest thing to real emotion Donghyuck has seen on him, and if that didn’t run too close to friendly banter then he would make a comment on that. As it stands, he ignores it.

“I’ve been to Glasgow before,” he says. “This isn’t my first time touring.” Donghyuck barely stifles the glare in his eyes. “There’s a place around here. A bar. It’s nice.”

“You’re inviting us to the pub,” says Donghyuck.

“Sure,” says Mark. “If that’s how you want to look at it.”

And that’s how Lee Donghyuck ends up down at a mysterious Glasgow pub, with Mark Lee and the other members of Girls With Dogs. The girl at the counter is checking Jeno out, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed—instead, he’s discussing exactly where the name _Girls With Dogs_ came from with Mark. 

Jaemin catches Donghyuck’s eye, and Donghyuck _knows_ he’s thinking something along the lines of _this Mark guy is cool, why does Donghyuck hate him so much? Oh right, now I remember, it’s because he’s a stupid bitter and jealous bastard_.

Donghyuck glares at the counter, listening to Jeno retell the story about how he’d seen a girl no taller than five foot with blonde hair, a tennis skirt, and the biggest, most aggressive-looking dog he’d ever seen. “That’s kind of the vibe I want to exude, as a person,” he says.

Mark laughs. “And how did you guys—like, how did you guys even come together, as a band?”

“We were at school together,” says Jeno. (Donghyuck decides that, in a different life, Jeno knows how to sing and is the frontman of the band, and Donghyuck sits in the back and moodily hits the drums.) He lets Jeno get halfway through the story about how Jeno and Jaemin had been friends since the first day of preschool, and how Donghyuck had moved schools in Year Seven, and how Renjun had transferred there when his private school went bankrupt before it starts to feel like someone is watching, like there’s a more sinister intent behind Mark Lee’s incessant questioning.

He doesn’t want Mark to know about how Girls With Dogs were formed. He doesn’t want Mark to cast his judgment on his life. It’s bad enough that Mark has to hear him sing, has to exist in the same space with him for the next two months.

“I’m going outside,” he announces suddenly, standing up so fast that he almost trips over a chair leg. Jeno looks up at him, questioning. “I need to—” He trails off, desperate for any excuse to get out of here. “I need to smoke.”

Jaemin’s face contorts into confusion. Jeno looks as if he’s suddenly began re-evaluating his life. Renjun, apparently the only member with any understanding of Donghyuck as a person, stares at the bar and shakes with silent laughter.

“I’ll go with you,” says Mark. Donghyuck screams internally.

“You don’t have to,” he says, gritting his teeth.

“I want to,” says Mark.

 _Fuck off,_ he thinks, but somehow musters the tact not to say. Instead, he shrugs noncommittally, hoping it’ll scare Mark off, and steps out of the pub into the night.

It’s quiet, for a main city street. He can hear the distant honks of cars, and hoots of drunk revellers in side streets, but the street that he’s standing on is relatively quiet. It makes Donghyuck feel small, and inconspicuous, and unimportant—but it’s oddly comforting. He’s hyperaware of Mark next to him, can feel him scrutinizing him, wondering if he’s ever going to light a cigarette and take a drag. The excuse feels dumber and dumber by the minute.

“I don’t actually need to smoke,” he blurts out finally when the silence becomes too much to deal with. “I don’t. Smoke, I mean.” He makes a point of staring at the asphalt and not at Mark—partly because he doesn’t want to look at his face when the only reason he’s out here is because he just doesn’t want to think about _Mark Lee’s face_ , and partly because he’s sure Mark has some amiable expression of polite confusion plastered across it. “I just—couldn’t really deal. With everything, really.”

“I get it,” says Mark. “Was it the noise or something?”

There’s something personal in how he speaks, and not for the first time, Donghyuck wonders if maybe Mark has some hidden depths, a semblance of _something_ in a head that he’d assumed was mostly empty. “No,” he answers—a stupid response, really, because it’s a perfectly fine thing for Mark to assume.

“Oh,” says Mark. “What is it, then?”

Donghyuck shrugs. “Dunno.”

“Oh.”

Donghyuck doesn’t know what makes him do it, but he blurts out, “I don’t really like you.” He’s still not looking at Mark, because he doesn’t want to see his reaction.

“You know, I figured that out for myself.”

That makes Donghyuck raise his head up from the place on the pavement to stare at him quizzically. Mark doesn’t look offended, just—resigned. “Really?” Fighting the urge to say something more along the lines of _wow, you’re less dumb than I thought you were,_ he says, “I kind of assumed you were just. Just.”

“Oblivious?” asks Mark. “Just because you were being passive-aggressive to me doesn’t mean I wanted to back. I figured it would make matters worse if I responded, and I do have an arena tour to finish, and I don’t need conflict with the opening act. Actually, that’s probably the _last_ thing I need.”

Donghyuck stares at him dumbly. “Huh,” he says.

“You don’t like me, then,” Mark says. “Go on.”

A pit of annoyance burrows its way into Donghyuck’s stomach, and he decides that this conversation had been so much easier when he was convinced he had the upper hand. “So I didn’t want you hearing my life story. Or—my band’s life story, if we’re being pedantic, but it might as well be mine, it’s only been my life for _nearly four years_.” He crosses his arms. “I didn’t appreciate the intrusion.”

“You literally do interviews about it,” says Mark.

“Well,” says Donghyuck. “I get paid for those.”

Mark stares at him. For a brief moment, the corners of his mouth twitch. “I think we need a truce,” he says finally. “We’ve got to co-exist for the next two months, so we might as well do it without open conflict.”

 _I’ll try my best not to murder you,_ Donghyuck thinks sardonically, then realizes he’s said that aloud when Mark laughs softly as if he’s not sure if Donghyuck is joking.

He stays silent for a second, and Donghyuck thinks Mark is done, before he speaks in a voice that’s deceptively soft for how cutting an observation it makes. “It doesn’t suit you as well as you think it does,” he says. “The whole asshole frontman thing. It doesn’t really work.”

He vaguely pats Donghyuck’s shoulder blade and turns to go back inside, leaving Donghyuck in the streets of Glasgow, fuming, because _how dare he_.

Maybe he will pick up smoking, he thinks idly. Maybe smoking will be a welcome distraction from Mark Lee and how goddamn smart he seems to think he is.

“Wait,” he blurts out. Mark turns around, hand on the door handle, an illegible expression on his face. “Aren’t you—aren’t you going to ask me _why_ I don’t like you?”

Mark laughs softly, hollowly. “I don’t need to,” he says. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

That leaves Donghyuck with a stone in his gut. He thinks about the articles he’d read when they released their first single through a major label. _Girls With Dogs show promise with their debut single, but at the loss of musical identity. Girls With Dog’s first single echoes a thousand people before them. Girls With Dogs—serious promise, or just pretty boys with flashy songs?_

Mark had heard things like that a thousand times, but so had Donghyuck. Donghyuck was serious about his music, but so was Mark. He feels a sinking feeling in his chest, burrowing into his stomach—the realization that he’d done the same thing to Mark Lee as music critics had done to Donghyuck.

He doesn’t like Mark Lee. But he thinks he can learn to tolerate him.

 

The first show of the tour goes swimmingly.

Donghyuck had been pretty sure not many people would even know his songs, but the crowd had sung along to _Miss You_ and cheered politely through others. He’d felt pretty damn proud by the end of it—and based on the reactions of the guys when they leave the stage, he wasn’t alone in that feeling either.

He watches Mark’s performance on the sides once he’s done getting rid of his stage makeup—noting in annoyance how much more in his element he seems here than he had at Goldfest. At Golfest, he’d seemed hyper-aware of the bias people already had against him; Donghyuck had been playing for an ambivalent crowd, but Mark had been playing for a crowd that had already made up their mind. Here, he knows the crowd and the crowd knows him, and there’s a confidence running through him that underlines every action. He’s far more natural—he knows the crowd love him already, and he’s trying to hold onto that love.

At best, it’s inspiring. At worst, it’s incredibly attractive. Donghyuck doesn’t want to try and figure out which one it is, because he’s worried about the results not being what he wants to hear.

When Mark comes off stage, he grins at them. “You guys were great.” 

Donghyuck despises how earnest he sounds, so he says the first thing that comes into his head, which happens to be “Nice eye makeup.”

Mark grins. “Thank you,” he says, leaving Donghyuck with his insides all confused because he hadn’t meant it as a compliment but he supposes if he squints it technically means that he thinks Mark has pretty eyes. Which—okay, he does, but he also doesn’t need to know that. Donghyuck feels seven different types of fucked up.

 

In Manchester, they do an interview for Radio One, and the host asks Donghyuck what it’s like to be on tour with Mark.

Donghyuck would like to think that he gave an intelligent answer to that question.

In reality, he blanks out, which is probably preferable given that he’s fairly certain his default answer would be _this may well be the worst experience of my life_. It’s only for a few seconds, but a few seconds is enough for people to get the picture—he can see the host’s eyebrows recede into his hairline. “Mark is fine,” he says finally. “We’ve not been, um, on tour with each other for all that long, so.”

“But surely you must’ve discussed things beforehand?” says the host, his tone amused, clearly trying to diffuse the tension.

“Um,” says Donghyuck. “Yeah? Of course?”

Renjun winces visibly, and Donghyuck wants to elbow him and yell _this radio show is being filmed and livestreamed you absolute asshole_.

“It’s just that—” Donghyuck begins, trying to think of any way he can salvage the disaster of a situation. Jaemin kicks him in the shin under the table. “Well—”

The host smiles stiffly. “Well, let’s play our next song from the very man in question!” he says, his voice light with false ease. “This is Mark Lee’s latest single, he’s just released it as a single before he sets off on his European tour…”

Johnny, understandably, is furious. He phones Donghyuck up, international phone bill be damned, and tells him in no unclear terms that he is a _celebrity_ and he has to be _prepared_ and _stop letting petty dislike get in the way of being able to do your job_. Which. Ouch.

“Twitter says you hate Mark,” Jeno tells him brightly as they’re having the final touches of stage makeup put on them.

“Twitter isn’t wrong,” Donghyuck says. His attention is split, though; half of it focused on Jeno, and the other half focused on the way Mark is chatting amiably to one of the stylists, and the way his shoulders shake with the force of the movement when he laughs, and the obnoxiously loud sound of it. It’s kind of a stupid laugh, really. Much like everything else about Mark Lee.

When he turns around to return his attention to Jeno, he’s squinting at him as if Donghyuck is the last problem of his maths homework that he just can’t figure out. “What?” he asks abruptly.

“Oh, nothing,” says Jeno. He smiles brightly, his eyes crinkling. “I’m going to go—leave you to—”

“To?” asks Donghyuck, frowning.

“To ogle Mark,” says Jeno, only he says it in one massive rush so it comes out more like _toogleMark_. By the time Donghyuck deciphers what exactly it is Jeno was saying, much less processed what it means, he’s already out of his chair and rushing for the door of the room. “See you, Hyuck! I have to go—clean my bass!”

Donghyuck stares at himself in the mirror. He was not ogling Mark. He was not. He would never.

But just as they’re going to soundcheck four days later at the Berlin show, Mark grabs onto Donghyuck’s wrist and shoves a cellphone in his face, and he’s posing for a photograph before Donghyuck even has a chance to pull his wrist out of Mark’s grip. The skin burns where it was touched. Donghyuck rubs it unconsciously and snaps, “What the hell are you doing?”

Mark grins at him. “Taking a selfie.”

“Why?”

“Because people are convinced you’re a brat who hates me,” says Mark easily. “So now they think you shouldn’t be on tour with me, because you supposedly hate me.”

“Well,” says Donghyuck, on the verge of blurting out _that’s because I do_ by default before he hesitates for a second. It’s a second too long, Mark notices, and he positively _beams_ at Donghyuck. It throws him off kilter for a second, like he just looked directly at the sun. “That’s because I do.”

Mark’s smile widens, blossoms, and Donghyuck is going to have to go back to the hotel room after the show and write a hundred lyrics with sun metaphors to get this out of his system. “No you don’t,” he says. “I think you’ve warmed up to me.” He grins at Donghyuck and spins around dramatically to make his way down the hallway for soundcheck. 

“I haven’t had _time_ to warm up to you,” yells Donghyuck to his back. “This is our _fourth show_! Hey! Hey—Mark Lee, get over here, I need to _explain_ —”

 

On the flight to Vienna, Mark ends up next to Donghyuck, because the universe _and_ Lufthansa Airlines both have a personal grudge against him. Berlin to Vienna is one hour fifteen, but they board twenty minutes before the scheduled flight time and then the pilot is announcing that there’s a half hour delay and Donghyuck’s knees are being crushed by the seat in front of him.

To his credit, Mark is quiet for the first twenty minutes. He’s found the inflight magazine in the seat in front of him and has read through it, despite most of it being in German and also containing the most vapid travel articles Donghyuck has ever seen.

When he looks up, a girl in the seat across from them is eyeing him with great interest. “Hey, Donghyuck,” he says, leaning towards his ear. “I think she’s checking you out.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right,” he mumbles back. “You’re the famous one, Mark.”

“Am I famous in Germany?” Mark asks innocently, as if he hadn’t just played in an arena there, as if they weren’t scheduled to go back in two weeks to play in Munich. 

Donghyuck swats his shoulder and unconsciously rests his hand on Mark’s wrist. The girl’s eyes flick from Mark to Donghyuck to their hands sitting together on the armrest to the closeness of Donghyuck’s mouth to Mark’s ear, and turns away. Oddly vindicated, Donghyuck sits back in his chair. “Not famous enough that you don’t have to fly on this flight,” he says. “With sub-standard leg room.”

Mark shakes his head. “We’re the same height,” he says. “I should be complaining just as much as you.”

“My shoes make me taller,” says Donghyuck stubbornly, even though that doesn't make any sense because right now he's wearing sneakers and not the military boots he wears on stage. “I wish you had a private jet.” Then he considers flying the entire one hour fifteen from Berlin to Vienna on a flight that was totally empty but for Mark Lee, and reconsiders. “I wish you had a private jet but I was still here. On this flight.”

“Jeno and Jaemin and Renjun are invited on my private jet,” says Mark, crossing his arms. 

“The worst part is they would totally sell me out for a private jet,” says Donghyuck idly. 

Mark laughs, his voice oddly magnified by the pressure of the cabin, and Donghyuck feels his throat go dry in a way that he’s also going to blame on the cabin pressure. He leans over into Donghyuck’s space, shifts slightly to press his skull against Donghyuck’s shoulder, and Donghyuck tenses in annoyance before his muscles relax again. “Have you ever been to Austria, Hyuck?”

“My grandparents have,” says Donghyuck, ignoring the way the nickname falls so naturally off Mark’s tongue. “Only time I left the country before this though was when I went to France with my French class.”

Mark says something in French which could mean anything from _your hair makes you look like a poser_ to _I love you, please marry me underneath the Eiffel Tower_. “You speak French?” he asks dumbly. Mark raises an eyebrow at him as if to say _duh, clearly_. “Oh, right. Canada.”

Mark laughs. “Vancouver isn’t one of the French parts of Canada,” he says. “But my school was a bilingual school. And my parents thought me being trilingual was a good look.” 

He says the last part with a kind of cold, hard, residual bitterness that hits a little too close. Donghyuck doesn’t ask, and Mark doesn’t tell. Instead, he says, “Say something else, then?”

Mark does. It’s pretty indecipherable. Donghyuck had done four years of French, but he’d also spent most of his GCSE years skipping class to hang out under a bridge and pretend to smoke, so he thinks it’s pretty understandable that his grasp on the language is rusty. His heart is thudding in his chest, but Donghyuck blames it on newfound aviophobia and not the fact that his arm is still next to Mark’s on the armrest. “That’s kind of hot,” he says finally. 

It would have been fine if Mark had done his regular thing—laugh kind of delightedly, or duck his head, or be all sweet and flustered and dumb so that Donghyuck could roll his eyes and laugh it off and forget about his momentary lapse of judgment. That would have been fine. That would have been easy to forget about.

What _isn’t_ fine is the way Mark raises an eyebrow and pitches his voice slightly and asks, “Oh? You think so?”

 _Fuck,_ Donghyuck thinks. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck._

“Fuck,” he says. Mark’s eyebrow raises even higher so that it disappears into his hairline. Quickly, he adds, “Off. Fuck off. Stop _leering at me_ , you _lecherous_ —”

Mark bursts out laughing, his head ducking into his lap and then thrown back, his neck bobbing with the shocks of laughter shaking his shoulders. “ _Lecherous,_ ” he repeats. “ _Lecherous_. Donghyuck, oh my _god_ , why did you call me _lecherous_.” He wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. “God. What are you, _Shakespeare_?”

“Lecherous isn’t even archaic,” says Donghyuck, fighting back his own laugh. Mark’s laugh is infectious at the best of times, but right now when he’s laughing to the point of tearing up, hard enough that the flight attendant gives them an odd look, it’s downright impossible. “It’s not like I called you—God, I don’t know, _salacious_.” That makes Mark laugh even harder, and Donghyuck can't fight off a smile but it's gone off his face when Mark turns back to him.

“We should do a spoken word album,” says Mark. “I’ll speak French and you can use exclusively words with three or more syllables.” 

“Why?” Donghyuck asks. 

“That’s kind of hot,” Mark parrots.

Idly, Donghyuck wonders what kind of bizarre straight boy flirting he’s gotten himself into, but he echoes, “Oh? You think so?” He feels remarkably like he’s just stepped off a precipice.

He half expects Mark to react like _he_ had—by getting flustered, or shoving him away, or by clapping his hands together like a Victorian woman who has just been asked to expose her ankle. But Mark only winks at him, and moves in his seat to rest his head on Donghyuck’s shoulder as if he’s daring Donghyuck to shove him off. 

Donghyuck doesn’t, even when Mark puts headphones in and decides to stay like that for the entire flight, and his neck hurts when he gets off at Vienna airport.

 

Mark falls asleep on Donghyuck’s shoulder again in the car going from the Vienna venue back to the hotel. They’re sitting in the back, with Jaemin riding shotgun, and one of the staff driving the rental car. 

Jaemin looks back, takes a photo, and gleefully uploads it on Twitter. 

In it, Donghyuck is staring out of the window looking very much he’s trying to ignore the weight on his shoulder, and Mark is exhaustedly passed out against Donghyuck’s collarbones. (Which cannot be comfortable. Donghyuck isn’t sure exactly what Mark is playing at.) 

He saves the photo when it gets uploaded, ready to be defensive that he’s saving it for tour memories if anybody asks. Nobody does.

 

They’re in Milan for three days.

The first day, Donghyuck goes and gives an interview on Italian TV and they perform one of their lesser-appreciated singles. There’s a few Italian fans, with signs like _Donghyuck we <3 you_. One girl in the crowd shows up with a glossy picture of her dog. Jeno almost fucks up the bass when he catches sight of it and points it out to Donghyuck. Then they’re rushed off to Italian newspaper to give an interview about how nice Milan is, and Donghyuck takes some obligatory photographs to text to Yeri (who replies, as expected, with a complaint about how he’d ignored her throughout the tour and she was feeling neglected by her only brother).

The second day, Donghyuck opens for Mark, and Mark’s Italian fans yell for them louder than any other crowd they’ve played for yet. He goes off the stage with the Mediterranean climate soaking through his shirt but his chest puffed out in pride and decides that he loves Italy—at least, until he opens his phone and finds speculation about Mark following a pretty Italian model on Instagram interspersed with videos of his own performance.

The third day, they have nothing to do, so Jaemin fucks off with his credit card and Renjun drags Jeno to go walk around the city like the absolute tourists they are, and that leaves Mark in the lobby of the hotel to ask, “You want to go look at cathedrals or something?”

“You are such a goddamn tourist,” says Donghyuck. Mark grins at him, and Donghyuck sighs and answers, “Sure, why the hell not.”

They can’t see the Last Supper because it requires advance booking, but Mark tells him that there’s no point because it’s all faded anyway, and Donghyuck tells him that it’s still an important part of Renaissance art history, and Mark tells him that he’s pretentious. Still, they see the Milan Cathedral, and the Sforza Castle, and the Piazza Mercanti, and Donghyuck takes so many photos that he has to concede that he’s become a horrible tourist. 

His favourite photo, though, is one he takes of Mark, dramatically staring at the sky in front of an equally dramatic statue. He tells himself he only likes the photo because of the composition of it, and not of the way Mark’s mouth is twisted in a way that makes it clear that immediately after the photo his dramatic pose broke with his trademark laughter. He makes it his home screen, too, and tells himself it’s because he wants to cherish this memory.

They stop at a cafe around three, and Mark orders some horrible thing loaded with sugar and cream, and Donghyuck doesn’t get anything because the cashier gave him the dirtiest look he’d ever seen when he asks her if they serve iced Americanos. Mark laughs at him on their way out, and tells him he’s met his match in pretentiousness. 

 

They’re backstage at the venue in Lisbon, waiting for the fans to leave the venue before they can start clearing stuff up, when Mark says, “Hyuck, could you pass me my jacket?”

The jacket in question sits on the floor beside Donghyuck’s chair, and he’s halfway to picking it up before the use of the nickname hits him. He locks eyes with Jeno, who’s cross-legged on the floor and gaping in disbelief, and says, “Since when do you call me _Hyuck_?”

“You didn’t complain last time,” says Mark.

 _Last time?_ mouths Jeno. Jaemin shushes him, leaning closer as if Donghyuck hasn’t noticed he’s eavesdropping.

“You were half asleep last time,” he argues. “I assumed you were just too lazy to say my full name.”

“I was wide awake,” says Mark. “I was talking to you about Austria. You said that—”

“Yes, yes, I know what I said,” Donghyuck says quickly, because Jeno and Jaemin and Renjun are trying to act like they aren’t a peanut gallery for Donghyuck right now. 

Mark grins at him knowingly. “Okay, then,” he says. “I’ve thought about you as Hyuck in my head ever since I decided that you wouldn’t mind if I called you Hyuck out loud.”

Once Donghyuck has made sense of that frankly nonsensical statement, and Jeno has whispered something furiously to Jaemin who shushes him again, he’s affronted. “What makes you think I wouldn’t mind?”

“Well, I know you don’t hate me,” says Mark. Donghyuck wants to argue otherwise, but it falls short before it can reach the edge of his mouth and Mark beams at him. “So it was a reasonable assumption. Hyuck.”

“ _Donghyuck,_ ” Donghyuck says.

“Hyuck,” Mark repeats. “Hyuckie. Hyuck-ah.”

“ _Mark_ ,” Donghyuck says, trying to sound stern, but his voice shakes a little bit.

“Yes, Hyuckie?” says Mark innocently. Renjun masks a laugh very badly as a cough. Donghyuck wants to _die_.

“Don’t call me that,” he says, but it comes out petulant and sulky instead of commanding, and it only makes Mark smirk. “Mark. Markie? Mark-hyung?”

“We really need honorifics in English,” says Mark, sounding delighted. “Only you would end up talking to me with respect when trying to insult me, Hyuck. Only you.” 

There’s something like fondness in his voice. Donghyuck can feel the back of his neck go red with embarrassment. “ _Mark._ ”

Mark is silent for a second, his eyes narrowed as if he’s scheming. “Duckie,” he says finally. Donghyuck stares at him blankly. He’s pretty sure his ears have just gone red, and he’s not sure if blushing can affect his hearing. “Dong _hyuck_. Duckie.”

Renjun looks paralyzed in shock, mouthing _Duckie_ in awe. Jaemin chokes on his own spit and has to have his back slapped by Jeno, who stares for a second before positively _howling_ with laughter.

“I—hate—you—” Donghyuck finally manages to sputter. Mark is grinning in satisfaction, and _God_ , Donghyuck isn’t sure if there’s any point above his shoulders that _isn’t_ flushed in embarrassment right now. “How do you even have _fans_ , oh my _God_.”

“I’m extremely handsome,” says Mark.

“Humble, too,” Donghyuck responds sarcastically. His neck is still flushed red. “If people knew how much of an asshole you are they wouldn’t ever come to your shows.”

“I think they’d be amused,” interjects Jaemin.

“Good thing _nobody cares what you think,_ Nana,” says Donghyuck. 

“Same goes to you, _Duckie_ ,” says Jaemin. Jeno whoops. Donghyuck really hates his friends.

“Hey,” says Mark seriously. Donghyuck turns to him. “Don’t call Donghyuck that, can’t you see he’s embarrassed?”

“I hate all of you,” says Donghyuck, as Jeno laughs so hard he seems to flop boneless on the floor and Renjun does another of his weird laugh-cough-choke things. “I’m leaving and finding another band and getting new friends and _none of you can stop me stop laughing Jeno or so help me_ —”

 

They’re in Barcelona, and they’re all toeing some line between tipsy and flat out drunk because some genius named Na Jaemin decided to order up drinks and snacks on the room service tab. Jeno and Renjun are playing cards, some bizarre combination of gin rummy and poker that Jeno supposedly invented himself; Jaemin is lying on the carpet changing the TV channels and singing along to whatever song pops into his head. 

And Mark—

Mark is lying with his legs hanging off Donghyuck’s bed in a way that cannot be comfortable, his head resting against Donghyuck’s hip. Normally, Donghyuck would tell him to move, or flip him off, or make some other comment saying how irritated he is, but right now he doesn’t trust his mouth not to do something stupid like tell Mark how pretty his eyelashes are.

The fact that he’s even letting himself think the thought is just a testament to how drunk he is. He needs water, but if he moves he might lose the comfortable weight of Mark’s head against his thigh as he breathes in and out and hums along to whatever Jaemin is singing, and that’s not something Donghyuck wants to do right now. 

Mark is the first one to move—he moves up closer so his mouth is right next to Donghyuck’s neck, and says, “You’re all very nice drunks,” to Donghyuck’s collarbone. Donghyuck frowns at him, still not trusting his mouth—not trusting his mouth even more when it’s so close to Mark’s. “Nobody is telling anyone to fuck off.”

Jaemin chooses this moment to start singing again. Jeno sings along, this time. 

“I’m telling you to fuck off,” Donghyuck says. His throat feels like sandpaper. “Get off me, don’t you have your own room to be in?”

“Yours is nicer,” says Mark, his earnestness amplified by the alcohol. 

Donghyuck stares at Mark, whose eyes are half shut and whose hair is falling into his face. It’s light honey brown, has been since the start of the tour, and Donghyuck _knows_ it can’t be natural (especially not since his roots have started coming in) but the only time Donghyuck ever got his hair dyed he’d done it for cheap and it had been a mess and Mark’s looks so _soft_ and Donghyuck thinks he can blame it on the alcohol when he moves his hand to Mark’s hair and kind of….strokes it.

Mark hums but doesn’t acknowledge it further. They’re silent for a while, the only noise being Renjun arguing with Jeno through hisses over their made-up card game. Then he speaks. “Hyuck?”

“Hmm?” says Donghyuck. There’s a flush in his cheeks at the nickname that he can’t blame on the alcohol.

“You know why I wanted you guys to open for me?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question, but even if it wasn’t, there’s a lump in Donghyuck’s throat stopping him from answering. “I saw you guys perform at Goldfest. And I didn’t expect to like you guys, because you’d been so confrontational to me before, and I didn’t really think your music was anything special—no offence, there’s nothing truly original anymore, and anyway. It is special.”

Donghyuck’s heart skips a beat. “Why?”

Mark smiles. He’s not looking at Donghyuck—he’s staring at the ceiling, looking fond and tender and delicate ( _lovesick_ , his brain supplies). “Because it’s _you_. And you’re—you’re—” He sighs. “You’re you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” says Donghyuck.

“Does to me,” says Mark. “I went back and listened through to all your music and it all sounded different, even the stuff I hadn’t seen live, because you just have—it.”

“It?”

“It.” Mark sighs. “Charm. Charisma. You know? When you look at someone on stage and you think, _wow, he was meant to be here_?” 

Donghyuck’s hand has frozen in its stroking of Mark’s hair. “Mark,” he says. “ _Mark._ I don’t even know what to say.” His heart is in his throat, thudding against his Adam’s apple, and suddenly he feels like he can’t breathe. 

Mark sits up so that he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Donghyuck. “You’re going places, Hyuck,” he says simply. 

Donghyuck wants to kiss him. It would be so easy. It would be so _easy_. He stares at Mark, silent, for what could be anything from a second to an hour, his gaze moving from Mark’s eyes to Mark’s mouth. But he thinks about the tour, and the press, and the Italian model, and he doesn’t—he pulls his head away, and softly says, “You should get some rest.”

Mark hesitates. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, I will.”

It doesn’t matter. Mark won’t remember this in the morning—hell, Donghyuck probably won’t remember anything but the way his heart thudded in his oesophagus and the way his face had felt impossibly flushed and the way something had started blossoming in his aorta that will surely have spread to both ventricles by the next morning.

Mark leaves, and Donghyuck feels like he’s alone, missing the rise and fall of Mark’s breathing. 

Normally, this would be the point where he writes a song—before the sprouts of what could be feelings can have a chance to grow into a vegetable garden of adoration and infatuation reverence. He doesn’t _want_ to have feelings for Mark. Mark, who’s beautiful and charming and tells him that he’s _going places_ , like that’s not the one thing Donghyuck’s been wanting to hear from someone who isn’t his bandmate or manager or sister since he started this. Mark, who’s a celebrity and the tour headliner and _definitely straight_ , no matter how much he smiles and teases and compliments Donghyuck in a way that stabs him right in the heart.

Having feelings for Mark is a bad idea. Donghyuck should stop while he’s still ahead.

But then he thinks about how it feels when Mark smiles at him, and thinks about how much his heart seizes and squeezes and molds itself into new shapes when Mark says anything that could be construed as flirting, and he thinks that he doesn’t want to give up that feeling just yet. 

_Besides_ , he thinks. _It’ll make the song so much better if I just hold on._

By the time he wakes up, the feelings have made their way from Donghyuck’s heart into Donghyuck’s lungs, and have begun fighting to enter Donghyuck’s bloodstream. He lies down and buries his head in the pillow and lets them.


	2. curiosity becomes a heavy load

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The realization hits him like a derailed freight train hits the bottom of a cliff. It’s a realization that his feelings for Mark have gone further and deeper than he had ever intended, a realization that he’s fallen to the bottom of the precipice with no way to get back up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, long time no see
> 
> i’m so sorry about how long it took this chapter to get up! i was working on a couple other things and i also got intense writer’s block, as well as being super busy visiting family over winter break, but now i’m back with the second chapter. this one is shorter than the first chapter, but i’m expecting the third and final chapter to be longer so stay tuned~
> 
> the chapter title is from do me a favor by arctic monkeys

Things are fine until Copenhagen.

In Munich, Mark laughs so hard that Donghyuck’s stomach feels like it flips over. On the plane to Stockholm, Donghyuck puts his headphones in and pretends to fall asleep so he can ignore Mark bantering with Jeno. Backstage at the venue in Oslo, Donghyuck’s eyes catch on Mark for a second too long, and he turns back to find Jaemin frowning at him.

“Hyuck,” says Jaemin. “Bro.” 

“Bro,” echoes Donghyuck. “It’s fine.I’ve got it under control.”

Jaemin looks unconvinced, but he’s distracted by Renjun coming in to announce they have soundcheck, and by the time the show is over he seems to have either forgotten or realized that Donghyuck isn’t going to say anything he doesn’t know. 

And Donghyuck wasn’t lying when he said he has it under control. He’s _fine_. It’s just a crush.

And things go swimmingly until Copenhagen, anyway. Donghyuck can keep the distance with Mark the way he’s been doing since they started this mess, with all the grace and confidence of someone hopelessly pining but refusing to admit it to anyone. 

It makes sense, anyway, he thinks, staring out the window of today’s rental car on his way to an interview, steadily ignoring Mark, his headphones in his ears (as he had done almost constantly since he had his epiphany). For years, the only people Donghyuck could call his friends were Jeno and Jaemin and Renjun, and he was so close to them that even thinking about dating them was practically grotesque. It’s fine when Jeno grabs onto Donghyuck’s hand, or when Jaemin wraps an arm around his shoulders, or when Renjun rests his head on his shoulder. He’s never been a stranger to physical affection—hell, he’s fairly tactile himself. 

But Mark is uncharted waters. He’s sweet and he doesn’t hold a grudge towards Donghyuck for all the open antagonism and he’s fairly good-looking, Donghyuck supposes, so of course he doesn’t know how to react to him. It makes sense. 

“It makes sense,” says Donghyuck aloud. Mark looks up to him, startled, and Donghyuck rushes to think of anything that has ever happened in Denmark ever. “Why Hamlet was so depressed. This weather sucks.”

“You live in England,” says Mark.

“Have you _heard_ my music?” asks Donghyuck. Mark laughs softly and settles back into his seat, and Donghyuck tries to ignore the nagging voice in his head that tells him 

Apparently, the Danish fans had latched onto Mark and Donghyuck’s chemistry, or maybe the network just wanted to kill two birds with one stone, because this interview was with both of them on a Danish TV channel. According to Johnny, it’s nothing to worry about—according to Taeyong, it’s _an extremely important interview on a major Danish network that you should treat seriously_ , which just cements it in Donghyuck’s mind as _nothing to worry about_ with pure unadulterated spite. 

He’s not nervous. The thought of being all buddy-buddy with Mark on _live TV_ doesn’t make him at all nervous. He’s _fine_. 

The car pulls to a stop in front of a TV studio. Mark smiles at Donghyuck, and Donghyuck’s traitorous heart swoops into his stomach. “You ready?” he says, his voice quivering.

Donghyuck is halfway to saying that it sounds like it’s _Mark_ who isn’t ready, but then he sees the way his knuckles are pressed up against the window and stays silent. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Are you?”

Mark smiles so fast that Donghyuck almost thinks his nervousness is a hallucination. “Totally,” he says. “I’m totally ready.” He smiles. “We’re in this together, right?”

 

And Donghyuck would believe it, until the interview is almost at its end. The host is a man in his fifties or sixties, but he clearly has a lot of experience and Donghyuck wouldn’t be surprised if he was some kind of Danish celebrity. There’s a woman, too, a translator, and the way Mark is relentlessly smiling at her until she turns slightly pink turns Donghyuck’s insides over in jealousy. 

If anything, Donghyuck is pretty sure he came off worse in the interview. In his defense, he was going for intelligent and well-read, but in hindsight he thinks he sounded more like a twat than anything. Mark, on the other hand, is ridiculously charming—equal parts innocent boy next door and roguish charm. 

It definitely doesn’t help when the translator asks them how it’s been on the tour, and Mark says, “Donghyuck’s a great person to have around, really. I feel like I can do anything when he’s around.”

Donghyuck has to muster a lot of willpower not to blush. He’s pretty sure the back of his neck is still red when the question comes. 

The Question, more like. Capitalized for emphasis. 

The translator lets out a little laugh and turns to them, and asks, “A lot of people must have inquired about it, no? Your—ah, what’s the word in English. Your _sexualities_?”

“Ah,” says Donghyuck, because they’d agreed pretty early on that it would be easier to sell records if people were convinced Donghyuck was a man writing about a woman, or about a concept of intermediate gender. “This or that.” He laughs easily, the half-lie falling off his tongue, and darts a glance to Mark. 

To Mark, who looks as if he’s on the verge of shattering. His face has suddenly gone paler—his smile is still there, but it looks all too brittle, like his mouth and nose and eyes are all made of glass and not bones and skin and tendons. 

“People like to make assumptions, with our jobs being the way they are,” Donghyuck continues, because Mark almost looks like one good answer would break him into a million pieces. His heart is thudding in his throat, blood rushing into his ears, but if Mark isn’t going to answer then that leaves Donghyuck—

—Donghyuck, who promised when they made that agreement that he’d play along but wouldn’t outright _lie_ —

—Donghyuck, who’s ready to make something up with his teeth gritted without hesitation for Mark Lee.

The realization hits him like a derailed freight train hits the bottom of a cliff. It’s a realization that his feelings for Mark have gone further and deeper than he had ever intended, a realization that he’s fallen to the bottom of the precipice with no way to get back up. 

It’s a realization that it’s time to do something about it.

“But are they _true_?” the translator asks. 

Donghyuck’s brain searches desperately for an answer, something that’s not an outright lie. “I think the best thing about music is that it exists for people to put their own ideas on, and to project their own experiences. Whether I’m straight or gay or something in between—people are still going to listen to my music and think of their ex-boyfriend, or their ex-girlfriend, or their ex-partner of a third gender. So I think it takes away from everything, really, to say what my sexuality is, because that information being public kind of ruins people’s ability to make my music their own.”

It’s a totally bullshit answer, but the translator nods and moves on, translating what he said into Danish. Donghyuck notices it seems a lot shorter, and prays she didn’t say _this closeted prick just said he doesn’t want to say like he doesn’t know that’ll make us all know he’s in the closet, what a fool_. 

But life goes on, as it tends to do. And Donghyuck would’ve repressed the incident immediately if not for the way he can feel Mark’s tenseness from the closeness of their knees. 

 

“What was that about?” he asks after the performance that night. 

Mark looks up, startled, considers for a second, and then runs into explaining his choice to talk about whatever he talked about when he spoke to the audience. Donghyuck doesn’t have the heart to tell Mark that he hadn’t been paying attention because he’d been too busy ramming his head into the wall of the venue. 

“Mark,” he says finally, stopping Mark mid-explanation. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh,” says Mark. “Then what—”

“Today,” says Donghyuck. “Earlier. On the TV interview. Why were you so panicky?”

Mark’s eyes widen. “Ah,” he says, with all the grace and eloquence of a dead fish. “No, that doesn’t really matter—”

“I think it does matter,” says Donghyuck. “Since I was the one bullshitting an answer to a pretty invasive question about my sexuality while you didn’t have _anything_ to say, really—”

Mark exhales. “I’m sorry,” he says, in a way that makes Donghyuck feel _slightly_ bad. 

“You said we’re in this together,” says Donghyuck. “But I—the most difficult question I could be asked was asked and I had to answer by myself and I just want to know _why_.”

Mark swallows. “I’m—”

“Don’t apologize,” says Donghyuck quickly. “Look—if it’s something personal that you don’t want to tell me about then I respect that. But I just—I just needed to make sure it wasn’t just that you’d—like, decided not to do anything for kicks or whatever.”

Mark nods. “No—it’s not that.” He sighs, looks away from Donghyuck, and says, “Live TV makes me nervous because of my parents.”

That was the opposite of whatever Donghyuck had expected. He blinks. “Your—”

“My parents,” says Mark. “My dad started working in Universal Music in the eighties.” Donghyuck stares at him. “This changes everything about how you look at me, right?”

Donghyuck considers for a second. It _should_ , he recognizes. It should make him think something along the lines of _nepotism_. But it doesn’t, because he knows Mark, and he knows how good Mark is at what he does, and he’s spent enough time being stunned by the voice Mark has and the way he grips Donghyuck’s attention with something as simple as the way he pulls his head away from the microphone to take a breath. So it doesn’t change anything, and yet it changes everything, because the lack of reaction is change enough.

“It doesn’t,” he says finally. “Really. It doesn’t. What—”

Mark sighs. “I don’t—I don’t really know how to put anything into words right now,” he says, and Donghyuck instantly feels guilty for ruining Mark’s post-performance high. “But I think you deserve to know, and—” He trails off, going silent for a second, and Donghyuck is about to ask him what he meant to say or pretend he hadn’t said anything when he finally says, “And I want to tell you.” 

And Donghyuck isn’t even going to try and figure that out. He nods and says, “Okay.”

 

They’re on the plane from Copenhagen to Paris, and Mark is beside Donghyuck again. It still bothers Donghyuck, but for a very different reason—it’s less to do with his residual bitterness and more to do with Mark’s forearm occupying the armrest. 

In the row in front of him, Jeno is asleep on Renjun’s shoulder. Donghyuck takes his headphones out of his pocket in and is about to untangle them and turn the volume up on something loud and angry and with a lot of guitars when Mark clears his throat.

He turns. “What?”

Mark raises an eyebrow. “You wanted to hear the story, didn’t you?”

Donghyuck lowers his hand and shoves his earphones back into his jeans with a speed that would be almost comical. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I did.”

“It’s not very scandalous,” says Mark. He sighs. “I guess I’ll start at the beginning, then. My dad used to travel a lot, because of his talent agent stuff—he’d spend months at a time in California, and wire money into my mom’s bank account, so we weren’t—well, actually, we were pretty well-off, but I barely even knew him, so. So whenever I saw him it was—it was a pretty big deal.”

Donghyuck swallows back his questions—they make their way back down his throat, catching fire on their way and burning up his lungs. “I always liked to sing,” Mark says. “So I used to all the time—in school talent shows and things like that. And one time, my dad came down to Vancouver, and I was performing in a talent show that week, so my mom took him to see me sing. And I was—well, I must’ve been about eight or nine, but I was good for an eight or nine year old, and my dad recognized that. So he said to me—he said _Mark, do you want to be a singer? Like the ones I work with?_ And I said yeah, I would, I’d like that a lot.”

He runs a hand through his hair. Donghyuck can’t see his face, but he can picture it—all furrowed eyebrows and frowns and _something_ that can’t quite be read. “I’ve been in the public eye since I was fourteen. Since my voice finished cracking and the agency heard what it sounded like. The Youtube channel—it wasn’t my idea, it was the idea of the agency to push me as a boy next door, someone sweet and relatable and wholesome. I already had a contract then, but they didn’t publicize it until the channel took off—it was like _Mark Lee acquires a contract with Universal Music because of his Youtube channel_ and not _sike! Mark Lee had a contract all along!_ ” He shrugs, and Donghyuck can hear the grimace. “I was in a subsidiary of Universal Music. That’s when I started working with Taeyong, who—well, he knows all this stuff.” He laughs hollowly. “He’s more like an older brother than a manager, you know. I know he can be—cold, sometimes, but he’s all I have.”

Donghyuck hesitates for a second, then he moves his hand onto Mark’s shoulder, aiming for reassuring. Mark turns to him and smiles, and Donghyuck’s arm goes slack as if he’d been electrocuted. 

“At first, it was fine—I was following my dream, and it was fine, and everything was great, but—then the company got more and more greedy, and even though I was still a minor so they needed parental permission for everything—I don’t think my dad ever opposed anything. I think he started to get a little bit too complacent with how much money I was earning. So every interview had to be screened before it was allowed to be released, and I need approval of someone from the company whenever I post on social media, and—well, it sucks. But live TV _can’t_ be screened, so if I ever fuck up—well, I have to take the fall for it.” 

He laughs again, but Donghyuck recognizes it for what it is—a reflex action, to lighten a situation that’s already too far gone to save. “Everything is about the image— _no, Mark, you can’t release that song, it doesn’t match your image_ or _Mark, ignore what people say about you being a useless pretty boy, you’re getting paid, aren’t you?_ or _Mark, don’t be ungrateful, do you know how many kids out there want to be singers?_ Taeyong argues for me, most of the time, but—it’s not really enough. And obviously my boy next door image won’t survive me being gay, because teenage girls won’t want to date me then—so I panicked. Yesterday. And I’m sorry.”

Donghyuck’s heart thuds in his chest. “That was—literally the furthest thing from what I was expecting,” he says. And then his brain catches up with him, and he asks, “You’re gay?”

“Bi,” says Mark. “But you know how people are.”

And Donghyuck _does_ know how people are, knows it as well as he knows his own name, and he aches to say this to Mark but what comes out is “My parents didn’t want me to do this. To be in a band. So—so I know how it is to not be taken seriously in the thing that you want to do.”

Mark stares at him for a second and Donghyuck thinks he’s going to say something, but instead he puts his hand on Donghyuck’s knee; and it’s only then that Donghyuck realizes he’d been bouncing it out of nervousness. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says softly. “My contract finishes next year. I’m going to negotiate a better one.” He smiles. “And your parents will come around. Because I—because I know you’ll convince them.”

The seatbelt sign turns back on, the pilot turns on the intercom to tell people to get back in their seats, and Donghyuck sits beside Mark in a state of silent understanding. 

 

Paris, on the other hand, is a train wreck of the worst kind. The kind of train wreck that gets on the national news, and that people think is exaggerated until they see the pictures. 

Donghyuck would write a song about trains, and their unfortunate ability to derail and fly off precipices at a hundred miles an hour, but instead he’s in a car with a Mark Lee who’s just asked him why he’s avoiding him and a Na Jaemin who is staring out of the window and pretending that his Starbucks frappuccino is more interesting than their conversation. 

“Donghyuck,” says Mark. “You’re thinking something.”

“I’m thinking about trains,” Donghyuck says absently, which only serves to frustrate Mark even more. 

He crosses his arms and leans deeper into the chair and says, “You’re insufferable sometimes, you know that?”

“That’s not what you were saying last week,” says Donghyuck, just because he can. Jaemin in the front seat chokes on a piece of ice in his frappuccino, but Donghyuck doesn’t feel too bad for him because he’d bet real money that he’s currently on video call with Renjun and Jeno in the other car. 

“I just want to know why you’re ignoring me,” says Mark. 

Donghyuck yanks a headphone out. The wire falls to the seat, and the silence coming from it is admission enough. “Clearly,” he says, “I’m not ignoring you. If I was ignoring you, why am I talking to you right now?”

Mark stares Donghyuck in the eye. Donghyuck stares back, but blinks first, and watches as Mark edges closer to him and picks up the headphone and puts it in the ear and listens to the absolute nothing playing into it. “Oh,” he says. 

The roof of Donghyuck’s mouth feels like sandpaper. “You should really put a seatbelt on,” he says dumbly. 

“You weren’t listening to anything,” says Mark. Jaemin sucks in a sharp intake of breath. “You were just—you were just pretending to listen to something so I wouldn’t talk to you.”

Donghyuck stares at the driver’s seat and notices that the leather upholstery needs replacement because it’s peeling off the seat the same way the layers are peeling off Donghyuck’s heart. He feels horribly exposed. He feels like his skin is peeling off his organs. 

“Maybe I was,” he says finally. 

“Why?” asks Mark. 

“Because,” says Donghyuck. He can’t say it. He _can’t_. He’s not going to sit in a Parisian taxi in a traffic with a taxi driver who glared at them when they started speaking English and Jaemin doing a terrible job of being inconspicuous, and tell Mark _oh yeah, I’m actually super in love with you, haha! That’s why I can’t be around you like a normal human being anymore!_

“Because _what_?” asks Mark. His eyes are unfairly bright and boring past Donghyuck’s skin and bones and organs and into his soul. Kind of like God, or maybe a therapist. 

But Donghyuck is an atheist, and he stopped going to see his therapist when she told him that perhaps it was a good idea to open up a little more.

“Because maybe, just _maybe_ , you could use your brain and do the maths and figure out that it’s because I _don’t want to talk to you_ ,” blurts Donghyuck. Mark stares at him, tensing as if Donghyuck had slapped him instead, and a part of Donghyuck is glad for it. “Just because we’re on this tour and coexisting and whatever, just because you’ve _decided_ that we’re friends now—”

“Shut up,” says Mark. “Stop talking.”

“—does _not_ make us friends!” 

The car delves into silence. If Mark had looked like he’d just been slapped before, that’s nothing compared to now—right now, he looks more like Donghyuck had just beaten him up, held him at gunpoint, stolen all his money, and showed him a photograph of a dog who looked remarkably like his mother. Surreptitiously, Jaemin leans over and turns up the volume on the French pop music playing on the radio. 

“Mark,” says Donghyuck. “Mark, I’m sorry—we _are_ friends, I just—”

Mark shrugs, slides his own headphones out, and puts them in. There’s no sound echoing from them, and Donghyuck knows he’s not listening to anything either.

He stares for a while at Mark, who’s gazing out of the window with a false expression of awe at the Parisian streets, before he turns away and settles in his seat and tries not to look too distraught.

 

The remainder of the day takes the aforementioned trainwreck, adds two more trains and a collapsed tree, and starts the zombie apocalypse too just for good measure. Mark doesn’t acknowledge Donghyuck’s existence, their French radio interview is the most awkward thing in existence, and Donghyuck sits through two instances of Taeyong yelling at someone (the first, yelling at them for being unprofessional and compromising Mark’s tour, and the second, yelling at Johnny for being an incompetent manager and for being disgustingly laid-back). 

“I’m going out,” he says that afternoon, at about five—and, admittedly, he doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s going to do or when the sun sets, but he doesn’t care. Renjun and Jeno are already in the loop, it feels like Mark is going to be mad at him forever, and he needs his thoughts to settle and he needs to write a song. 

“I’ll go with you,” says Jeno hurriedly.

Donghyuck stares blankly at him. “You don’t have to,” he says.

“I want to,” says Jeno brightly. “Paris is a really nice city, and you seem like you’d be lonely.”

Mentally, Donghyuck translates this to _we got too busy of watching you brood so we drew lots to decide who’d have to talk to you and I got the short stick_. He shrugs. “Alright then, but I don’t think I’ll be good company.”

“That’s okay,” says Jeno. 

They walk in silence for a while, and Donghyuck can’t help but feel mocked—mocked by Jeno, who’s either here to try and make him talk or, worse, to _keep an eye on him_ , mocked by the people in the streets living their lives and communicating with each other in a healthy and effective way, and mocked by anyone and everyone who has ever called Paris the city of love. It’s not the city of love. It’s more like the city of terribly misplaced anger and emotional repression and—

“You’re brooding,” says Jeno. He sounds amused.

“I prefer to call it enjoying my internal monologue,” says Donghyuck stuffily. 

“So, brooding,” says Jeno. He slides his fingers around Donghyuck’s wrist, as if his hand is too far off to grasp. “You know we’re here for you, right? You don’t have to be all closed-off and—and like you’re living in your own head, or whatever.”

“Why not?” 

“Because _people_ can’t just—live in a bubble,” says Jeno. He stops on the pavement and moves in front of Donghyuck. Donghyuck sidesteps him, only for Jeno to move to the side as well, blocking him from moving forward. “Donghyuck.” There’s a seriousness in his tone that’s so unexpected, so unlike Jeno, that it makes Donghyuck stop and look him in the eyes. “People care about you. People want you to be happy. You’re literally—Hyuck, you’re literally the frontman of a band that _touches people’s heart_ , but I don’t think you’re willing to let your heart get—touched.”

Donghyuck stares at the pavement. The words hit him like a sack of bricks, like a wrecking ball hits a faulty building marked for destruction. He feels like a faulty building marked for destruction. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be apologizing to me,” says Jeno gently. “I’ve known you for long enough that I know you’re not _going_ to open up, and I know to expect you to sometimes say things you don’t mean.” Donghyuck opens his mouth to apologize again, but Jeno raises a hand up and silences him. “I’m talking. You should be apologizing to someone, but that person isn’t me.”

Donghyuck winces, and hears _it’s taken me years to not be annoyed by you_ written in between the lines. “Mark?”

“He cares about you,” says Jeno. “He deserves the truth, and you know it.”

“I can’t tell him the truth,” says Donghyuck. “Because the truth is—the truth is that he might care about me, but he doesn’t care about me the way I want him to care about me.”

“Is that it?” asks Jeno. “Oh, Hyuck.”

He gently moves an arm around him and steers him in the opposite direction. “We’re going to go back to the hotel,” he says, “and you’re going to tell Mark how you feel.”

“Don’t pity me,” says Donghyuck. “And I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not, Donghyuck?” asks Jeno softly. 

“Because—because I don’t want to get hurt,” says Donghyuck. “Obviously. And—well, it’s not like it’d be his fault if I got hurt, so I couldn’t even be mad at him, so I’d just—be hurt. And there’d be nothing I could do about it.”

Jeno sighs. “It seems to me,” he says, “that in being afraid of being hurt, you’re becoming the one hurting other people.” He hesitates, then claps Donghyuck on the shoulder. “Just—do what you need to do, Hyuck. But also—think about telling him the truth. It might not be as bad as you think.”

And all Donghyuck can hear is a damning representation of his own character. All he can hear is Jeno telling him in the nicest way possible just how tiresome he is. 

He considers it for a second, and then shakes his head. “I’m not going to do that,” he says again. “But I _am_ going to get Starbucks for everyone.”

 

When he gets back to the hotel, he writes a song. 

It comes out more easily, more simply, more naturally than anything has felt in weeks; just Donghyuck, his guitar, a melody, and a ballpoint pen scratching across lined note paper. 

When he looks up, Mark is standing against the door frame, looking remarkably out of place. “Mark,” he says, then grabs at the remaining drink in the Starbucks container and holds it out. “Um—I got you this.”

Mark stares at it, and then Donghyuck, with equal levels of suspicion. “Thanks,” he says dubiously, taking it and then turning around. 

“Mark,” says Donghyuck quickly. “Mark, wait.” Mark pauses in the doorway and rests a hand on the frame, not looking at Donghyuck. Undeterred, he continues, “I’m sorry—I’m sorry for yelling at you. We are friends, I think. I hope. I want us to be. Friends. But I didn’t know—I didn’t know if you wanted to be. And I was worried you didn’t really want to be, but this was just—you know, pity, or whatever, so I was—shutting you out.” He hangs his head. “I’m sorry.”

Mark doesn’t turn around, but he does say, “You think I pity you?” 

“Well—yeah,” says Donghyuck. “To an extent. I mean, you’re—” ( _Radiant. Incredible. Awe-inspiring._ ) “—you’re pretty great. And I guess I just figured—”

Mark turns around. “Donghyuck,” he says. “Donghyuck, why would you think I’m only friends with you because I pity you?” Donghyuck shrugs and instinctively moves to hide the song with his elbow. Mark squints at him. “What’s that?”

“Um,” says Donghyuck. “It’s just a song I wrote. Just now. It’s not very good, really, I’ll just—”

“Can I hear it?” asks Mark. 

There should really be a guidebook for these kinds of situations, Donghyuck reflects. _Dealing with a guy asking to hear a song written about him before he even knows he likes you for dummies._ But in the lack of a guidebook, Donghyuck does the first thing that comes to his mind, which is to say, “Sure.” Mark blinks at him, surprised. “But—but only because I need to record a draft version anyway.” He crosses his arms. “Otherwise, no.”

The corners of Mark’s mouth twitch. “Okay,” he says. 

Donghyuck takes out his phone and opens up the recording app, and then settles his guitar on his lap and experimentally plays the first few chords. Mark raises an eyebrow. “Is that it?”

“Shut up, asshole,” says Donghyuck. Mark grins. He places the phone on the table and presses record, and then starts to play. 

This is a bad idea, he thinks once he gets through the first four chords. 

But, as always, he’s dug himself into a hole that he can’t quite dig himself out of. So he keeps playing, and tries to lose himself in the song, and tries to pretend that Mark isn’t even there. Just Donghyuck and the guitar and the phone quietly recording everything there is to say. 

He finishes singing the lyrics, plays the last few chords, and stops playing. Mark bursts into applause before Donghyuck can even switch off the recording, and his traitorous brain stops him from switching it off until Mark is done. 

Donghyuck writes songs about people to purge his heart of feelings for them. Donghyuck writes songs about people to exorcise himself, to free his chest of the seizing feeling whenever he sees them. Infatuations. Heartsickness. Unshakable crushes. 

Donghyuck wrote a song about Mark. Donghyuck played through the song he wrote about Mark. Tradition says that Donghyuck should, therefore, not feel anything for him anymore. 

But when Mark breathes out an awed _that was amazing_ , Donghyuck realizes with a sick feeling in his stomach that it hadn’t worked. 

“It really wasn’t,” says Donghyuck, flushing. 

If writing a song hadn’t worked, what would work?

Mark ignores him. “You’re pretty great too, you know,” he says, and there’s the same youthful earnestness that Donghyuck has grown to associate with Mark in his voice. 

It’s still not the same thing that Donghyuck meant, though, and the knowledge of that aches through Donghyuck’s heart, flowing through his ventricles with his blood. Mark thinks they’re on the same page, but Donghyuck knows they’re not even reading the same book. 

_What would work?_ he thinks. _What would work?_

“The song’s pretty sad,” says Mark. “Melancholy. What’s—what’s it about?”

 _You_ , thinks Donghyuck, and almost says it. “Nothing, really,” he lies. “It just came to me.” He laughs nervously. “Unrequited love, I guess, but—not for anyone who actually exists.”

Mark swallows visibly. Donghyuck tries not to watch the movement of his throat. “Donghyuck, I have to tell you something—”

But that’s the exact moment Jeno and Jaemin burst in, trailed by a very embarrassed looking Renjun, talking about how Jaemin managed to convince a girl in the downstairs cocktail bar that he’s actually a student from the University of St. Andrews studying for a year abroad, and Donghyuck never finds out what Mark had to say. 

But he hopes that’s a good thing. 

 

The weight of words unspoken seems to change things between them, like how a weight dropped into a pond changes the pond’s water level. 

Neither of them acknowledge it. Donghyuck doesn’t bring it up. Mark doesn’t bring it up. Jeno, Renjun, and Jaemin do an excellent job of ignoring the massive iron wall that seems to have fallen down between them. 

The end of the tour creeps closer and closer. They play Brussels, where Donghyuck hangs his head and pretends not to be learning every aspect of Mark’s set for his memories later, and then Dublin, where they get drunk to celebrate the end of the tour and Donghyuck pretends this realization doesn’t make him impossibly upset and Mark sighs and smiles and says _ah, Donghyuckie, I like you_ and Donghyuck ignores it because Mark runs his mouth when he has alcohol in his blood. 

 

The last two shows are in London, in the UK’s second largest stadium. Back when they’d agreed to this, in Johnny’s office, Donghyuck had only gone along with it because of the promise of this venue and this stage. 

Right now, though, it fills him with dread. He doesn’t want to play here, because he doesn’t want the time to come when he needs to think of an excuse to talk to Mark, and because he knows he won’t be strong enough for a clean break when the tour finishes. 

“You seem down,” says Renjun knowingly as the stylist frustratedly wipes his face down with makeup remover. 

“I hate London,” says Donghyuck, which isn’t quite a lie but also isn’t the whole truth. 

Renjun sighs, places a hand on Donghyuck’s knee, and manages to get out “You know you can tell me anything, right,” before the stylist accidentally swats his arm away in her haste to get everything over with. 

“I know,” says Donghyuck. “And if I was telling anyone anything, you’d be my first choice.”

“But you aren’t?” guesses Renjun. Donghyuck nods, and Renjun sighs a sigh that should feel patronizing or pitying but instead just makes Donghyuck feel impossibly guilty. “Look after yourself, Hyuck. Don’t get hurt.”

And Donghyuck thinks back to the song lyrics hastily shoved into his suitcase, thinks back to all the times the sound of Mark’s laugh has made him feel like he’s been doused in ice cold water, and thinks _too late_. 

 

They drop Mark off at Heathrow Airport. 

Donghyuck hates saying goodbye to people on the best of occasions, but right now it’s the worst of occasions and he really hates the idea of saying goodbye. But they agreed they’d drop Mark off at Heathrow for his flight back to Vancouver, and then get the train back home, so here they are. At the airport. Saying goodbye. 

He finds he has to rush to the bathroom, and then wonder how plausible an excuse for his red eyes it is that he was smoking weed in the airport bathroom, and finally settles on _implausible_. 

When he gets back, Jaemin and Mark are arguing about the merits of different coffee shops. (Donghyuck wonders why he’d ever expected anything better.) “I’m telling you,” says Jaemin. “Costa Coffee is better than Starbucks in every way.”

“And _I’m_ telling _you_ ,” says Mark, “that Tim Horton’s is better than both.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re from _Canada_ ,” says Jaemin. 

“And _you’re_ just saying that because you’re from _England_ ,” counters Mark. 

“Hey, Hyuck,” says Renjun quietly. “Is everything okay?”

Donghyuck clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says. “I was just, um. Smoking a joint.”

Renjun squints at Donghyuck with a look of utter confusion. “We’re in the _airport_.”

“And I needed my fix,” says Donghyuck stubbornly. 

“ _Marijuana is not addictive_!” hisses Renjun. 

Mark looks up at that as if he’d just noticed Donghyuck is there. “Hey, Donghyuck,” he says. “Can we talk? Alone?”

Jaemin’s eyebrows raise so far into his own head that they’re practically in his hairline. Donghyuck coughs. “Um. Sure.”

Mark smiles, and then leads Donghyuck off to the doors of the departure section, suitcase in tow. _Only passengers allowed beyond this point_ , he reads, his heart sinking. 

“There’s something I need to tell you before I go,” says Mark. 

“Is this—is this what you were going to tell me in Paris?” asks Donghyuck. 

Mark nods. “And I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while, but—but I keep losing the nerve.” He sighs. “I like you, Donghyuck.”

“You—what?” asks Donghyuck. His heart races. “You like me? Like— _like_ me? Like you want to date me?”

“Yes,” says Mark calmly. “Actually, I think I’m in love with you, but I didn’t want to start off with that because it sounded too intense.” Donghyuck stares blankly at him, not even caring enough to pick his jaw up off the floor. “And I’m telling you because I think you feel the same way.”

This is the perfect opportunity, Donghyuck thinks. He can confess. He can say it. He knows Mark will accept it, he has everything ready for him—

But then he thinks about it, thinks about how he knows he’s moody and reckless and short-tempered and he says things he doesn’t mean, and about how it took Jeno years to be used to it, and, hell, about the way Jeno had practically said he was tiresome in all but words, and hesitates. He hesitates, because Mark deserves better than that. Mark deserves the world. 

And Donghyuck doesn’t want to hurt him. And Donghyuck doesn’t want to hurt himself. And he promised himself, back in Barcelona, that he’d cut his blossoming feelings out even if he had to yank them, root and stem and flower, from the soil of his heart. 

“I don’t, actually,” he blurts out. Mark stares at him. “Like you. Or love you. I mean, we’re friends. And you’re cool. And pretty great. But I don’t like you like that.”

“You—” says Mark. “But—what?”

“I’m not trying to date you, Mark Lee,” says Donghyuck. The lie feels acidic, coming up his throat like bile. 

“I just thought—” says Mark. “I just thought—because you get flustered when I compliment you and you’ve been avoiding me and you listened to me when I overshared and you wrote a whole song about unrequited love after we had an argument and I just thought—those were the signs that you had feelings for me.”

Donghyuck’s heart thuds in his chest. The world feels impossibly slow, and his head is spinning almost as if he’s got motion sickness. “You—you thought wrong.”

“Ah,” says Mark. “Oh.” He stares at his luggage tag and decisively not at Donghyuck. 

“I’m sorry,” says Donghyuck. _I’m sorry for lying. I’m sorry for being afraid._ “We—we can still be friends?”

“I don’t _want_ to be friends,” says Mark. He shakes his head, still not looking at Donghyuck, instead looking as if he’s memorizing the pattern of marble on the floor. “I think it’s better for me if we just don’t talk at all. If you just—leave me alone.”

“Mark,” says Donghyuck softly. 

At that, Mark looks up. “I don’t know how to be _just friends_ with people I’m in love with,” he says fiercely. “So just—don’t contact me.” He exhales, blinks a few times, and says in a voice as brittle as glass, “Goodbye.”

He turns towards the gate. “I’ll—I’ll see you around,” says Donghyuck desperately. _I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Turn around so I can tell you the truth._

Mark laughs hollowly. “Maybe,” he says. “Goodbye, Donghyuck.”

 

The others don’t ask why Mark disappeared so quickly, and Donghyuck is glad for it, glad enough that he pretends not to notice their whispering as he gazes out of the train window and listens to Mark’s discography on shuffle. 

He gets home. Enters his apartment. Puts his suitcase down on his bed. Locks his bedroom door so nobody will come in. Familiar bed, familiar room, familiar floor and ceiling and desk and notebook where he writes his songs in. 

He crosses to the desk and opens the notebook on a random page. It falls open on the song he’d written the day that he watched Mark cover his own song with nothing but a smile and an acoustic guitar. 

_God_ , he thinks, reading the lyrics. His lungs feel impossibly full; his chest feels like it’s burning. His heart is about to explode from his chest. _God, I was so stupid._

He sits down in his chair and reads the lyrics over and over until his head hurts with their familiarity. And then he takes out his phone and calls his sister and prays for the first time in years while he waits for Yeri to pick up. Prays that he’ll somehow be able to make everything feel alright again. Prays that things will be okay. 

But he knows in his heart that it’s not going to work. And he feels like he’s drowning in feelings that he should have cut away when he still had a chance. And he feels like he’s never going to breathe again without his lungs taking in a breath that’s immensely more sour with the lack of Mark and with the knowledge of how stupid he’d been. 

_Oh my god_ , thinks Donghyuck. _What have I done?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m sorry?
> 
> yell at me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/sarchngsey</a) or on [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.me/snicket</a). 
> 
> thanks for reading!!


	3. even my phone misses your call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His thirteenth song about Mark. _That’s an unlucky number,_ his mind reminds him, and he wonders if he had ever been _lucky_ in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well.
> 
> "i'll finish it soon," i said, six months ago,
> 
> i'm so sorry for the long wait! i've had serious writer's block and a few super stressful situations in my real life that have made me intensely demotivated to write--and of course i finally finish this three weeks before life-changing exams, and not on one of my many school holidays over the last few months.
> 
> but anyway! this is the last chapter and i hope it's satisfying for anyone who's been waiting, and if you're just new here--please enjoy. special thanks to kaya who's basically been my #1 moral support when it came to finishing this chapter.
> 
> a playlist for the chapter can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/shahdiae/playlist/38ocGHXBiyluO44MNKOUHf?si=Rit2SmqOTv2PqM9EiIrGNg). the chapter title is from harry styles's _from the dining table_.

Lee Donghyuck hadn’t slept for forty-two hours. 

It sounds worse than it really is, he thinks vaguely to himself, crossing out a word on impulse and leaning back to try to rub the exhaustion out of his eyes. At least he’s been using that time to be—productive, or some shit. At least he’s writing, writing new songs, even if—

Even if it feels like he’s writing about a person other than himself. He has a pencil in hand, a fresh notebook open and, right now, filled with words and lyrics and melodies. 

Was it any good? He didn’t know. But it existed, and it was something, and he knew he wasn’t finished yet. 

The curtains are shut—they have been since night fell two nights ago, and he’d gotten up to switch on the lights and close the curtains. He thinks, realistically, he should get some water, but he’s on a roll and he doesn’t want to snap himself out of this mindset, this conscious act of treating the pages of the notebook like the therapist he’s too stubborn to start seeing again. 

He feels almost like he’s watching somebody else’s life, a spectator on the absolute train wreck that is the life of Lee Donghyuck. It makes it easier, see—he’s not writing about himself, he’s writing about another person, he’s writing about someone _else_. Someone fictional. Because it’s not like Donghyuck is drowning himself in his feelings, both the feelings of inadequacy and the feelings he has for Mark Lee. 

_Donghyuck_ is fine. 

Really. 

Really. 

People just think he isn’t because—

Just because he’d hung up on Yeri when he told her what had happened and she flatly, disbelievingly repeated it back to him. Just because he’d been locked in his room for the last two days without anything but a bottle of water he’d stolen from the fridge. Just because his only sleep since leaving Mark at the airport had been a brief moment where he shut his eyes on the train. 

And because of all of that, his bandmates were currently in front of his door. He could _hear_ them whispering to each other, as if they’re conspiring about something. About him, most likely. 

Not like it’s necessary. He’s fine. Really. 

“Should I knock?” asks Jeno, his voice low. 

“No, that’ll overwhelm him,” says Jaemin. “Clearly he wants to be left alone, if you knock you’ll pressure him.”

For a moment, Donghyuck resents Jaemin immensely, and he tunes out the rest of the whispers in favour of the noise inside his own head. 

Everything is so _loud_. And Donghyuck is trying to do what he always does, to turn that noise into music, but it’s hard when he’s written an album worth of material and the noise is still drilling into his eardrums. 

He’s fine, he thinks. 

Really. 

The noise outside his door had died down, finally, which means that his bandmates had decided to leave him alone, finally. It’s a bittersweet victory, but he takes it, and decides that Angsty Gay Love Song #13 would have to wait until he went and got some food. 

His thirteenth song about Mark. _That’s an unlucky number,_ his mind reminds him, and he wonders if he had ever been _lucky_ in the first place. 

He opens the door, and almost trips over something on the floor. Confused, he kneels down and rubs sleep out of his eyes, and sees a bottle of water and a pizza box. 

There’s a note on it, in Jaemin’s handwriting, and Donghyuck feels his resentment dissipate more and more as he reads it. _Hyuck,_ it says. _We ordered pizza and saved you a box. Make sure you eat something!! We love you_. 

He stares at it. _We love you._

_In being afraid of being hurt, you’re becoming the one hurting other people_ , says Jeno’s voice in his head, deafening him with its sheer power, and for a second he lets it repeat again and again as his brain so desperately wants it to. 

But then he picks up the note, reads it over and over again—and it brings something else Jeno had said that day in Paris, just a few minutes earlier. _People care about you. People want you to be happy._

_Look after yourself, Hyuck,_ says Renjun in his head. 

He thinks about his boys and he thinks about the way they seemed to be walking on glass around him up until now, waiting for the moment when everything goes to shit, and he wonders desperately why they are so certainly on his _side_ when he really, really doesn’t deserve it. 

_We love you_ , says the note. 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels himself stumble onto the floor and lean against the doorframe, shutting his eyes to let the tears roll out. 

-

Lee Donghyuck doesn’t cry, he thinks an hour later, flicking through lyrics and melodies and refining them with a brand new purpose. 

A tear drops onto a lyric, blurring the ink slightly. He wipes his eyes on the collar of his hoodie and lets the paper dry. 

Lee Donghyuck doesn’t cry, and hasn’t cried in ten years, and he doesn’t really think he should start crying over a boy. 

But it’s not _over a boy_ at all, is it? 

He likes Mark. Maybe even loves him. And what really hurts is the knowledge that _Mark liked him too_ , Mark could very well end up being the best damn thing that ever happens to him, and yet. 

And yet the thought of dating him makes him unable to breathe—not in a flustered way, but in a way that feels like his lungs are filling up with water until he drowns. And yet, when Donghyuck thinks about what he could have said, he can’t think of anything he could have done better. And yet, Donghyuck doesn’t want to date Mark. He can’t think of anything he wants to do _less_. 

For a second, he thinks it’s because he thinks Mark is fragile. And it’s true that sometimes, he’s glanced at Mark and seen him looking brittle, prone to breaking at the slightest gust of wind—like the whole weight of the world is on his shoulders and crushing him until it flattens him completely. 

But he doesn’t think Mark is fragile. He thinks Mark is _incredible_ —almost too perfect, almost too good to be true. Like an ice sculpture—too glimmering, too beautiful for anyone to touch lest it falls apart. And Donghyuck thinks that, if anything, he’s like a cigarette lighter—small, compact, only a small flame but enough to set anything on fire if it needs to be.

He falls asleep still thinking about it, collapses on his bed after one slice of room temperature pizza. 

-

“I have an album,” he says the next morning. 

Renjun looks up from his phone blankly. Jaemin is still asleep, and Jeno had gone down to buy something for breakfast from the bakery in town—Donghyuck had heard him talking about it through the door, and had considered asking him to buy him a bagel before deciding against. That leaves just Renjun to hear what he has to say and react to it, so when he glances up and considers and his forehead creases Donghyuck feels his heart sink a little. 

“You have a what?” he asks. 

“An album,” says Donghyuck. “Or. Eleven songs.” He never had, eventually, ended up writing that thirteenth song, instead choosing to go back and perfect the ones he had. 

All of them except that first one, the one he’d first played for Mark in a Parisian hotel room. That one wasn’t going to see the light of day anytime soon. He’d listened to the recording of it once, last night, and the little bit of Mark’s voice caught on the end was almost enough for him to tear everything he had up and sit, cross-legged and weeping, on his bedroom floor. 

(He’d also made sure to change his home screen wallpaper, too, the one of Mark goofing around in front of a Milanese statue, copying its pose dramatically.) 

(He _hadn’t_ been able to delete any of the photos he had of Mark. He’d spent especially long staring at the photo Jaemin had gleefully posted of Mark asleep on his shoulder in a car in Vienna.) 

“Eleven—” repeats Renjun. 

“Well, we could use less,” says Donghyuck. “And obviously you all have to do your bits. And the lyrics are pretty depressing in parts, anyway, so maybe you’d want to change those, and I don’t think maybe they’re all that good, now that I’m saying it, but—”

“You wrote an album in two days,” says Renjun. 

“Um,” says Donghyuck. “Well. It might not be any good.”

“Donghyuck, you’re incredible,” says Renjun. 

“Well,” says Donghyuck, flushing slightly. “I suppose. I suppose you’re entitled to your opinion.”

Renjun laughs. “Get over here,” he says. Donghyuck steps over and lets Renjun’s arms wrap around him, and for a moment he’s still, tense, unmoving. The door swings open just as Donghyuck stiffly hugs back, and he hears Renjun say, “Our genius.”

“Ooh, what did Donghyuck do?” asks Jeno lightly. He dumps a paper bag on the coffee table and announces, “I brought breakfast!”

“Wrote an album,” said Renjun. “What’d you get?”

“Well, you know how Tiffany the baker _really_ has a soft spot for me and she’s always talking about how I’m such a nice boy and how I should take free stuff all the time?” Jeno says. Donghyuck rolls his eyes on a reflex, and then smiles to himself because this—this is familiar. “She kind of made me buy a bunch of stuff. I guess we have breakfast for the next four days here.” He grins. “Hyuck, got you bagels.”

Donghyuck could cry. “Thanks,” he says, before his throat closes up and he decides he shouldn’t say anything else for fear of his voice cracking halfway through. 

Jeno shoots him finger guns, and says, “So what’s this about an album, Renjun?”

“Donghyuck’s written one,” says Renjun. 

“Donghyuck’s written what?” asks Jaemin from the corridor, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He lights up at the paper bag, and swings his legs onto the sofa to peer inside. “Ooh, breakfast.”

“An album,” says Renjun. 

“When?” asks Jaemin around a mouthful of croissant. 

“Um. Last two days?” says Donghyuck. His voice goes up in pitch at the end, like it did when he was fourteen first meeting these guys and desperate for them to like him. “It’s. Not a big deal.”

“Holy shit,” says Jeno. 

“Wow,” says Jaemin. 

“Isn’t he great?” asks Renjun.

“Have you heard any of it?” asks Jaemin. “Or are we waiting for Donghyuck to get up and play it?”

“It’s not very good,” says Donghyuck. 

Jeno sinks into the sofa and smirks. “We’ll be the judge of that.”

-

The judge ruling: positive. 

Overwhelmingly so, actually. They work for the better part of two weeks on finalizing it, ironing out what needs to be ironed out, before they call up Johnny and get themselves a meeting. 

(Secretly, Donghyuck is glad that Johnny cleared up his schedule for them. He knows, of course, that Johnny has other clients, but he also—well, he’s a fan of the idea that they’re the most important ones.)

The album’s final conception is a lot more upbeat than the slow paced melodies Donghyuck had worked with when he wrote it—speeding things up, adding instrumental breaks, making a pop rock album from his most private thoughts. That helps, though. It helps for Donghyuck to disengage himself from what he wrote. 

(He’ll be damned before he lets Renjun talk him into writing synths into it, though. He’s not here to make a fucking 80’s tribute album.)

“An album?” asks Johnny sceptically, and Donghyuck watches as the other three nod earnestly. “Go ahead then. Do you have the demos?”

Renjun pushes a USB stick over the desk. “They’re pretty messy, though. We didn’t record them in a studio.”

“We might be able to use that,” pipes up Jaemin. “You know. Samples and stuff.”

Johnny raises an eyebrow, but Donghyuck catches him repressing a smile. “Samples and stuff.”

Forty minutes later, Johnny hums in appreciation as the final track closes. It’s one of the more hopeful songs on the album—and, ironically, one of the first ones Donghyuck had written. (They got progressively more teen-angst as the two days had gone on.) “It’s good,” he says. “You boys have outdone yourself.”

Donghyuck ducks his head and hopes he’s not blushing. “Thanks.”

“We’ll have to meet with the higher-ups,” says Johnny. “I’ll send them the files.” He grins, opening up a new tab for his email, and adds, “Warning. I think they’re going to want to do a couple more commercial things. Maybe get a feature or something.”

“Someone big?” asks Jeno, a look in his eyes almost seeming as if he’s running through a mental list of all the bands they used to listen to in Renjun’s garage back in high school. 

“Sure,” says Johnny lightly. “As long as their manager picks up the phone.” And then, “The Mark tour got you guys a lot of attention. People are saying you might be the next big pop-rock crossover.” 

Donghyuck winces a little at the name, but doesn’t say anything. Johnny raises an eyebrow, but to his relief doesn’t ask, continuing, “ _Billboard_ said you should probably aim to cross into America with the next album, or else the window of opportunity will be lost. Have you guys done any networking over the last year or so?”

Donghyuck is about to say no, when Jeno says, “Yeah, totally,” and lets out a long list of names. He blinks. “How did I not know about this?”

“It was fine,” says Jeno. “I didn’t mind doing it.”

His forehead furrows, frustrated and a little upset. “I’m the frontman,” he says, hating the way his voice sounds so small when he speaks. “That should’ve been my job.”

“You don’t like doing things like that,” says Jeno gently. “I do, so I did it.” He smiles and puts a hand on Donghyuck’s knee, and only then does Donghyuck realize he was bouncing it.

“We’re a team, Hyuck,” says Jaemin. “If you don’t feel comfortable doing something you shouldn’t have to do it. Not if one of us can do it instead.”

Donghyuck swallows. “Yeah,” he says, staring at the ground. “Sure.”

Johnny frowns and turns to the others. “Guys, can I speak to Donghyuck for a second? It’s—frontman stuff. The higher-ups wanted me to mention it.”

When he hears the door shut behind them, Donghyuck looks up. “What’s the matter?” he asks hurriedly. “Is something wrong? Did I—do something wrong on the tour, or did I mess up, or—”

“Donghyuck,” says Johnny. Donghyuck looks up. “It’s okay. I just said that because I wanted to speak to you.” He clears his throat. “I know I’m just your manager, but—I do care about you. I was talking to Taeyong—Mark Lee’s manager, you know—and I just realized. What good kids the four of you are.”

Donghyuck’s eyes sting, and he wonders when his brain had started making _manager_ and _responsible male figure_ synonymous. “I thought you hated Taeyong,” he says stupidly. 

Johnny sighs. “Kid,” he says. “The lyrics of the album, and your reactions to things—I know I don’t really have the position in your life to say this, but.” He sighs again. “If you need anything, kiddo. I’m here. Or I can put you in touch with some people who might be able to help.”

“Thanks,” says Donghyuck. “But—I don’t really need it.”

Johnny doesn’t seem convinced, but he doesn’t press it, and for that, Donghyuck is immensely grateful. “Alright,” he says. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” Donghyuck lies. 

-

That night, he calls the office of his old therapist. 

It rings once, then twice, then three times before he loses the nerve and hangs up, switching his phone off for the next eight hours to ignore their calls back. 

-

They start filming their new music video a month and a half later. 

The single is going to be released in four days, three weeks before the video, but Donghyuck’s seen the ideas for the music video. It’s very dramatic, most likely black and white, lots of shots of him gazing blankly into the camera. 

Typical stuff, really. And the director had totally shut down Jaemin’s request to have some motorcycles and/or monster trucks on stage, so that made the whole process really boring. 

He rolls his eyes and stretches out his legs in the waiting room, sliding his phone out of his pocket and lazily opening up Twitter.

_BREAKING: Korean-Canadian singer Mark Lee reportedly splits with Universal Music?_ says the first headline on his timeline. He stares at it, blankly for a second, his brain short-circuiting, and then he stares at his phone screen and can’t help but laugh. 

And laugh, and laugh, and laugh. 

And he doesn’t even know why he’s laughing, anymore, until Jaemin comes over and pats him on the shoulder and yells to hold off the shoot for five minutes, and Donghyuck realizes that he’s half laughing, half hyperventilating. 

So Mark didn’t have to worry about his company anymore—so Mark didn’t have to worry about coming out, or anything like that. Donghyuck was happy for him. He really, truly was. 

But he’s laughing, because after he’d seen that headline he’d somehow instinctively opened up his messages and texted Mark _congrats on the exit_. 

And that. 

Well. 

That had been a mistake. 

-

_Girls With Dogs reveal the first single from their second studio album, the name of which has not yet been revealed_. 

Donghyuck stares at the headline until he could recite the words in his sleep, before he decides to tune into the not-a-party that was happening right now. 

(Really, Donghyuck needed rockstar friends. And not—to be celebrating the release of their single with Johnny and their mixing engineer, Kibum, and the music video director, Jessica, and a couple of other people from the company, and the fairly good-looking but decisively Not Mark Lee models from the music video. With a cake that said _let’s get this dog_ for some reason. And very minimal alcohol.)

“How’s the reception?” Jaemin asks him, clearly looking away from flirting with someone though Donghyuck can’t tell who that _someone_ is. 

“Good, I think,” he says, and swipes up again to refresh. _Girls With Dogs’s new single is infectious and could spell mainstream success…_

“Nice,” says Jaemin, leaning back into his conversation. 

His phone is locked, lying on the sofa, but he has a news alert for their band name because _of course he does_. _Girls With Dogs show a more mature, emotional side on new single. Could Girls With Dogs’s new song catapult them into a new market? Girls With Dogs’s new single — nothing bad, but nothing new either._

_god i know i’m glad to finally be out of there_

He grabs his phone at the last one, because that _isn’t_ a notification from a news site, that’s a text message from Mark. Mark Lee. He almost drops his phone in surprise. 

Hurriedly, he unlocks his phone, remembering the sinking feeling when he’d seen the message get read four days ago. But maybe he hadn’t fucked up. Maybe Mark wanted to be friends again. Maybe—

_ignore that it was meant for someone else lol_

Donghyuck can’t even bring himself to react this time. He just stands up and leaves in silence, and walks home in the pouring rain barely even noticing his cold wet shoulders. 

-

It’s not that Donghyuck thinks Mark is fragile.

But maybe it _is_ that Donghyuck really doesn’t know Mark all that well at all. Maybe it’s the fact that he’d known Mark for two months, and only around a select amount of people, and that isn’t nearly enough time to really get to know him.

Real people, he reminds himself, cannot be perfect, glittering ice sculptures. If real people were ice sculptures, the world would be full of cold, drab puddles, and the hem of Donghyuck’s jeans would be soaked through. 

Lighter or no lighter, he thinks. If the world was made up of ice sculptures, they’d all be melted by now, and—

He turns over and buries his head in his pillow, and wills his mind to stop extending this convoluted metaphor so he can finally sleep.

-

“The only problem is,” says Mr. Lee, one of the higher-ups, just as they’re finalizing the album tracklist, “that there aren’t many points on the record where you think, lyrically, _things are looking up_.” He raises his hands in an ineffectual way and adds, “But, of course, it’s _your album_. So it’s up to you.”

_Suck my dick, Sooman Lee,_ Donghyuck thinks, but doesn’t say. What he does say is, “What do you propose?” 

“I think these songs here,” he says, reading off the titles of the last three tracks. “They have a lighter feeling, something a bit more hopeful.” Jaemin grins at him from across the table. They’re all proud of the closing track, both lyrically and musically. “But the album opener is quite bitter, quite heartbroken, and I’m not sure if you might want something a bit more. Anthemic.”

“Have you got anything a bit more upbeat?” asks Johnny. 

Donghyuck considers, and for a second, the song he wrote in Paris floats to his mind. It’s not a happy song—but it’s a song that he thinks is some of his best work, and it’s a song that he’s proud of, but. 

But. 

“Forgive me for bringing this up,” Renjun says. “But—Hyuck, there’s that song you wrote on tour, right? Perhaps we could try recording that one?”

Donghyuck winces for a second, and Renjun moves back a little. Then he sighs and says, “We can—try going through it.”

Mr. Lee clears his throat. “It would be nice if, a couple of singles down the line, we could release something upbeat that’d stick in people’s mind. It could mean mainstream success if you had a single which hit big on the radio.”

But Renjun ignores him, and instead asks Donghyuck, “Are you sure?” 

Donghyuck thinks, _time to try exorcising this again_. And so he smiles, steels his face, and says, “Yes. Sure as anything.”

It doesn’t matter, he thinks. He’ll just pause the recording before he has to hear that little split second of Mark applauding proudly. (But he knows the more likely situation is that he’ll play that little sound clip, over and over again, until it finds a permanent place in the back of his head.)

-

The months pass in a whirlwind of music videos and interviews and performances.

It’s easier than he remembers to put on his game face and smile and play the part that he’s supposed to play. He talks about the album and his lyrics, and pretends that he doesn’t feel as if he’s been skinned alive and put on display for the general public, internal organs and venous system laid bare for the world’s consumption. And, for the most part, it doesn’t bother him as much as he worries that it will, even though he spends two hours before every interview not knowing what to do with his hands, staring at them until he’s memorized the lines on his knuckles.

Even though he feels like there’s something glaringly _wrong_. 

Occasionally, he bullshits his answers, when things get too close. But he’s generally able to come up with something—something sufficiently pretentious (which Jaemin laughs at him for, once) but something which also totally detached him from the narrative. As far as anyone knows, the songs are something that happened to him—nobody knows that these songs _are_ him, that there’s a small drop of his lifeline in every lyric. 

The album release date is set for November; enough to get them into the eligibility window for the British awards, and enough to give them a bit of time to work on the American market because they’re not in the eligibility window for the American awards yet. Johnny tells them this with a sigh, as if he’s not a fan of the idea, but Donghyuck prefers the idea of getting it out as soon as possible.

(There’s been talk about a headlining tour, too, and Donghyuck is _definitely_ on board for that.)

The more he waits, though, the more he worries. Worries that it won’t be good enough, that it’ll just be received as _lukewarm_ —not even outright _bad_ , just...mediocre. 

He plays the full album for Yeri in September. She stares at him when it finishes for a few seconds, and he feels almost guilty in the view of her scrutinizing look. 

She sighs, and then moves back to track four. He watches as she listens to it again, as she reaches the first chorus, hesitates, and says, “Dad would like this.”

“Yeri,” begins Donghyuck. 

“He would,” says Yeri. 

“Did he even listen to our debut album?” he asks ignoring her. 

He knows the answer, anyway, from how Yeri’s face falls and then picks itself back up again. “I—I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe?”

Donghyuck sighs. “That’s not enough,” he says. “You know that.” 

Yeri hangs her head. “I know,” she says. 

“This is—this is the thing I love the most,” says Donghyuck, gesturing towards the laptop. “Writing music, making music, performing music. And if he and Mum can’t accept that then I don’t—I’m not going to try and change their mind.” He swallows. “You understand, don’t you?”

Yeri nods, and instantly changes the topic to the fact that her new roommate at university is on a water polo team. He’s pretty sure he’s never been more grateful for her. 

-

To everyone’s shock, the song that launches Girls With Dogs in the American mainstream is not their second single, the song Donghyuck had performed for Mark in Paris. 

The song that launches Girls With Dogs in the American mainstream is their _third_ single. It’s the first one Donghyuck wrote over those three days—the lyrics are raw, apologetic, and a little painful to perform. 

But he can’t _lie_ , either. It’s an apology wrapped up in a four minute song, and an apology should be sincere. 

So when an interviewer asks him to explain the song, he sighs, glances at whichever of his boys are closest for strength (in this case, Renjun), and says, “This song? This song is—an apology. To someone who I hurt. And more importantly it’s—a physical response to that feeling when you desperately want to make amends but you know. You know it’ll never happen.”

The interviewer blinks, as if he’s taken aback. “Can you elaborate?”

Donghyuck shakes his head. “I think it takes away from the song if I do, don’t you think?” He leans back. “Our music—and this album in particular—is music for everyone. I don’t want to explain my songs, because I think it’s more special if you listen to it and imprint your own experiences onto it.”

The interviewer laughs, clearly a little put out, and continues on with his questions. Donghyuck breathes shakily and tries not to let his brain descend into an endless repetition of _Mark Mark Mark_.

-

The next time he sees Mark, it’s in the hallway of a building after they’d just finished an interview. 

Well, he doesn’t see Mark first. He sees Lucas Wong, who had just released his first major label single, featuring Mark on the chorus. It had soared to the top of the US charts on release. 

(Girls With Dogs were the only thing blocking it from the top of the UK charts. Idly, in a faraway part of his brain, Donghyuck recognizes that delicious irony.)

“Hey, man!” says Lucas brightly. “What’s up, dude? I haven’t seen you since...Goldfest?”

Donghyuck nods, smiles stiffly, and wonders if Lucas acts like this with everyone he speaks to. Like the person he’s talking to is his best friend. “How are you?” he asks politely. 

Behind him, he’s vaguely aware of the others. Lucas gives all three of them a kind of _what’s up_ nod, and says, “I’m on top of the world, man. _Billboard No.1!_ Pretty crazy, huh?”

“Oh,” says Donghyuck. They’d only made it to 37th on Billboard, but even that was something. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, I was just doing a joint interview with Mark,” says Lucas. “He should just be—oh, hey, Mark!”

It’s like the first entrance of the hero in a film. The world seems to stop—no, totally slide off its axis—for a second as Mark steps out of the same door Lucas had stepped out of. Donghyuck glances to the sky to see if it’s raining, but sees only dull autumn light. 

He kind of wants to be flung into the sun. Or, at the very least, turn invisible. 

“Hi,” he says instead. His hands remain regrettably opaque.

“Hello,” says Mark, voice dull. He’s thinner than he was the last time Donghyuck had seen him, his cheeks hollow and his eyes much less bright. 

“Um,” says Donghyuck eloquently. “How—how are you?” 

“Alright,” says Mark. There’s a stiffness in his words and a tension in his jaw that makes Donghyuck’s chest fucking _ache_. Ache like he was born aching, ache like he will ache forever. And, for a second, he looks at Mark and wishes that Mark would look right through him, to look through his skin and to see everything underneath it. He wishes that Mark would _see_ him—all of him, the real him. 

But Mark only blinks and looks away, his eyes glazing over. “Yukhei, come on,” he says. “Nice seeing you, guys. Jaemin. Jeno. Renjun.”

And then he’s gone, as quickly as he’d appeared, and Donghyuck thinks, _ah, it really is time to move on_. 

-

As it turns out, _moving on_ is harder than you would think, between interviews and meetings and performances on late night television. 

As it turns out, _moving on_ is even harder when you barely have time to eat and drink, let alone sit down and think about your feelings. 

And as it turns out, _moving on_ is especially impossible when the object of your affection sends you a message at eight p.m on a Tuesday reading simply _I’m sorry for being so cold to you a few days ago._ And then, _I was just taken aback._

Donghyuck unlocks his phone for a second, stares as if he’s expecting another message along the lines of _sorry, that was meant for my grandma_. (That would at least explain the perfect grammar.) 

The message never comes. He types _it’s okay_ , and then backspaces on that and types _don’t worry about it_ , and then backspaces on that and types _understandable, i did break your heart_ , and then finally goes back to the original _it’s okay_.

_how are you?_ Mark answers. For some odd reason, Donghyuck almost feels a weight lift off his chest at the lack of capitalization. 

_good,_ he writes. _album coming out in a couple weeks_.

_good luck!_ Mark replies. 

Donghyuck swallows. There’s a kind of stiltedness to their conversations, he realizes, something he hadn’t noticed before. Something automated and mechanical and tense, like a taut bowstring, or like a balloon waiting to pop. 

Something clicks in his brain, like finding the lost final piece of a jigsaw puzzle hidden underneath a cushion on the sofa, the most obvious place that you forgot to check. 

It isn’t that Donghyuck thinks Mark is fragile. It never has been. It’s that Donghyuck knows that _he_ is the fragile one. It’s that Donghyuck is terrified of being hurt. And more than that—Donghyuck is terrified of loving someone who isn’t able to love him back. Love him back in his entirety, love all of his messy, petty, incredibly flawed self. 

Sure, Mark isn’t a bad person. But, Donghyuck thinks—does he really know that? Does he even know Mark? 

He knows that Mark has a smile that could outrival the brightest stadium lights; he knows that Mark always feared the idea of being shoved into a cookie-cutter image his whole life. But he doesn’t know his favourite colour, and he doesn’t know what movies he likes, and he doesn’t know his thoughts on pineapple on pizza or if cereal goes before milk. Whether he’s ever had a pet, or whether he likes dogs or cats more, or—hell, he doesn’t even know if he has _siblings_.

All he does have is a handful of memories from a tour shoved together in close proximity, and that’s it. 

He’d been in love with Mark, he thinks. Or was it the idea of Mark? _I couldn’t have dated him back then._ It wouldn’t have worked—it could have never worked. 

They barely even know each other. 

And Mark isn’t perfect. Mark is high-strung, and probably quite petty, and he’s sure that he’s fully capable of keeping a hell of a grudge. He’s passive-aggressive and a little bit bossy. He can’t deal with being friends with people he’s in love with, but can’t work with people he knows don’t like him.

The bottom line is: he’s not perfect. He isn’t an ice sculpture that Donghyuck is going to shatter—he’s a person, and Donghyuck is a person, and maybe neither of them should expect perfection and just expect the idea that sometimes things won’t work out. 

He picks up his phone. _mark can i ask a question?_

It’s not that his thoughts have changed overnight, he thinks, staring at the ceiling fan. It’s not that two minutes of text messages have flipped his whole world view. But he thinks he’s gone from being totally lost to maybe, having a place to start—to start to open up to the possibility of failure, or compromise, or unintentionally being hurt. To start to dispel the notion that he’s hard to deal with, or a bad person to be around. And to start to stop putting people on pedestals. 

He loves Mark. But he doesn’t know if he loves Mark like someone he wants to date, or just as the idea, the concept, the boy in the floral jacket playing love songs on a guitar. Not the Mark who is flawed and might fuck up sometime, who is utterly lovely but also so much more than that. 

His phone buzzes. _sure_ , says the message, with a little smiling emoji. 

Donghyuck exhales. _opinion on pineapple on pizza?_

The message goes through. He waits a few seconds with his breath held, as the message goes from _delivered_ to _read_ , and exhales when he sees the typing bubble pop up. 

And then he sits back against his pillow and lets the world begin again. 

-

The album comes out. 

Really, Donghyuck had been expecting a bit more fanfare. They wait, after all, staring at the world clock on Renjun’s phone as it strikes midnight in Australia. But it feels almost underwhelming, and a little bit like a loss, like everything has come to a close. 

But then they have to go and talk about the album, in between meetings with executives about the possibility of a world tour ( _!!!_ ), and Donghyuck thinks he’s loosening up a little bit in interviews because the eyebrows of the person interviewing never really seem to disappear into their hairlines anymore. 

And he texts Mark. At first, a little, but as the weeks goes on he realizes it’s a lot. Because, as it turns out, they do make a good pair of friends when they’re not constantly forced together with the thinly veiled threat of _like each other or else!_ It’s impossibly easy to pick up where they left off—or, maybe, a month before they left off, back when Donghyuck may have been slightly endeared but hadn’t been drowning in a swimming pool of repressed emotion. 

It’s almost ironic. If they had met any other way—at college, maybe, or however else normal people met others and forged friendships—they’d have been friends. Properly friends, not—whatever the hell they are now. 

Mark has a bizarre music taste, is an only child, and puts cereal before milk but eats pineapple on pizza. (This, Donghyuck decides, is a question he should have asked from the first day. If he hadn’t already decided to get over his crush by now, that would have put the nail in the coffin.)

But for a band who had just released their sophomore album ( _!!!_ seems to be the only thing Donghyuck can think whenever he remembers that simple fact, although he’s not sure how you can think a punctuation mark) things were—uneventful. In the first four weeks after the album comes out, three notable things happen. 

The first: Johnny makes a deal with Olivia Hye, an up-and-coming alternative singer, as the opening act for what becomes a _confirmed_ European tour. (If he’s being honest, Donghyuck isn’t sure if this is a good thing. Her music is good, and, really, there’s a chance she might outdo him.)

(When he voices this to her, she laughs. “So, like you did with Mark Lee, then?” He doesn’t have the breath to tell her how wrong she is, how much of _Mark_ doesn’t show up in the shitty iPhone videos that get uploaded onto Youtube after his concerts, how watching him from the wings used to feel less like watching a pop star and more like being winded.)

(Keyword there being _used to_.) 

The second: The critical reviews that come through are pretty strong, really, but Donghyuck finds he doesn’t care about that validation as much as he thought he would. What he _does_ care about is the day that Jaemin shoved a phone in his face to show him that _the frontman of landmark alternative band SHINee recommended their song on Twitter_.

The third: Donghyuck’s father texts him to inform him that he did enjoy the album, that Yeri showed it to them, and that he hoped it did well. So. That was something, he supposes. Better than nothing, at least. (“Fuck them,” Jaemin says when he hears. “Let’s stick a thinly veiled song about how they can fuck themselves in our next album.”) 

They also get told that they’ve been shortlisted for two BRIT awards, and that they’re going to go on pretty big talk shows, and that a lot of different DJs and rappers are vying to get to do a remix. 

So Donghyuck thinks he’s doing pretty well for himself. No— _they’re_ doing pretty well for themselves. Girls With Dogs are the next Big Thing, according to at least one article Jeno did a dramatic reading of in their living room. 

“The album’s about a short-lived romance,” he says in one interview. “It’s about the whirlwind of emotions in such a short time, from indifference to infatuation to desperately trying to pretend those feelings never happened.”

“I wouldn’t say there’s any song on the album that’s a love song,” he says in another. “When I wrote the album, I wasn’t in love, but I thought I was.”

Another journalist says in his review that the album “has a very present sense of youth to it even when there’s a unique kind of maturity in the lyrics; like the wise old man trapped in the body of a twenty-year-old that Donghyuck Lee seems to be.” (He’s pleased at that. That was definitely, at least partly, intentional.)

The reviews are overwhelmingly good, actually, better than they were for the first record—and Donghyuck would swear to anyone who would listen that he didn’t actually care _that much_ about reviews and critics, but this feels validating. He’d cut open a vein and let it out into neat three minute pockets when he wrote the album—but at least it hadn’t gone unnoticed. 

It’s nice. It feels like he’s living some kind of truth; even if it’s not the full truth. It would be nicer, he thinks wryly, if the other three didn’t give each other oddly speculative looks whenever he tried to explain something about the lyrics—but that’s neither here nor there. 

-

_what are spiderman and his spouse once they leave the wedding ceremony?_

Donghyuck blinks at his phone. _i….don’t know?_

_newlywebs_ , replies Mark. 

Donghyuck’s eyes roll so far into his head that they almost pop out. Instead, he replies, _that’s a terrible joke but at least it’s inclusive_ and puts his phone back in his pocket.

_Newlywebs_ , he thinks to himself, smiling despite himself. 

-

It’s a Thursday when Donghyuck dials the number again. 

It rings once, then twice, then three times, and then he hears a polite woman’s voice say, “You’ve reached Dr. Jung’s office, how can I help you?”

He clears his throat. “Um. Hello. I’d like to—to make an appointment.”

The woman’s voice says, “Okay then, sir, have you had other appointments with Dr. Jung before or is this your first time?”

“I already have a file,” says Donghyuck. “Um. My name is Lee. Donghyuck Lee.” 

He hears tapping that must be the receptionist going through the computer files. “Ah,” she says. “Mr. Lee, I can book you in for next Wednesday at 4pm?” 

Donghyuck nods, then remembers that she can’t hear a nod. “Yes. Yes, that—that works.”

“Great,” says the receptionist. “Thanks for making an appointment!”

The line goes dead. Donghyuck pulls his phone away from his ear and realizes that his grip on it has turned iron. 

_It’s okay,_ he thinks. _It’s a step._

And he hopes that, for once in his life, he’s making a step in the right direction. 

-

_i’m about to do something stupid wish me luck_ , says the first text message on Donghyuck’s phone when he wakes up. 

The message had been sent at one in the morning—he does the maths and is pretty sure that it had been five in the afternoon in Vancouver. He wonders, vaguely, how long he had kept the Vancouver-London time difference memorized, and then decides it doesn’t matter. 

Instead, he unlocks his phone and looks up _mark lee_ on Google. 

_Singer-songwriter Mark Lee, 20, comes out as bisexual,_ says the first headline he sees. For a second, he blinks at it in confusion, before he clicks on the article to read it. 

It’s very simple, just a copy-pasted transcript of the letter Mark had posted on his Instagram, and a few empty words of congratulations. Donghyuck scans it, catches a few phrases despite the buzzing in his brain— _difficult decision_ and _wanted to be honest_ and _living a truth_.

He reaches for his phone and presses call on Mark’s contact. _International call rates be damned_. 

The phone rings once, twice, a third time, and it’s only then that Donghyuck realizes that he may be able to pay the bill for an international call, but he can’t pay the time difference away. He moves to hang up, but the phone call goes through, and Mark’s voice says “Hello?”

It’s the first time they’d spoken—with words, not just text messages—since that impossibly awkward meeting after their interview, what felt like months ago. And it was the first time he’d heard Mark’s voice like that, soft and fond and a little tired, since the tour. (At least, assuming you didn’t count any of the videos of Mark on Youtube that Donghyuck had _accidentally_ stumbled upon.) 

He clears his throat and says “Congratulations,” trying his best to sound suave and confident and not just oddly charmed. _This was a bad idea,_ he thinks vaguely, but he can’t put his finger on why. 

Mark laughs on the other end. “Thanks,” he says. “Did you really call me at—” He pauses for a second. Donghyuck wonders if he’s looking up the time difference, or trying to calculate it in his head. “—nine in the morning, just to congratulate me on coming out?”

“Technically, it’s eight forty-five,” says Donghyuck, and then realizes that doesn’t make it any better. Mark laughs again. Donghyuck hesitates, and then adds, “Were you sleeping?”

“Oh, no,” says Mark. “I’m kind of too hyped up on adrenaline to sleep. Trying not to read any comments until I come down.”

“Good idea,” says Donghyuck. “For every fan saying you’re an inspiration you’ll find six white ladies named Karen who never heard of you before today but think you’re a curse on the fucking planet.”

“Ah, yes,” says Mark, clearly holding back from laughing. “I’m a terrible influence on children, and I should be banned from showing my face in public.”

“Oh, no,” says Donghyuck, mock-serious. “No, you must go out in public, otherwise who are we going to throw tomatoes at?”

Mark laughs again. For a second, Donghyuck lets his heart flutter, and tells himself it’s a totally normal way of reacting to a laugh. _Laughter is infectious, right?_ “I didn’t realize tomatoes were homophobic.”

“They absolutely are,” says Donghyuck. “Devil’s vegetable.”

“I _like_ tomatoes,” says Mark. 

“You also like pineapple on pizza,” says Donghyuck. “Clearly, there’s something wrong with your tastebuds and you can’t be trusted.”

Mark laughs softly. “And tomatoes are a fruit,” he adds.

Donghyuck stops for a second, and then _he_ laughs. “You asshole,” he replies. “You absolute dickhead.” 

“That’s uncalled for,” says Mark, restraining his own laughter. 

“Prick,” says Donghyuck. “Absolute— _muppet_.”

Mark is silent for a second. “You mean, like Kermit?” he asks. 

“Fuck you,” says Donghyuck. 

Mark laughs. “You’re using up international minutes just to insult me?” he asks. “I’m _wounded_.”

“I hate you,” says Donghyuck. “Congratulations, though. Really.” He doesn’t say _it’s a really brave thing to do_ for fear of coming on too strong, or for sounding like an underpaid school counselor—but he wants to. 

Mark sighs softly. “Thanks, Hyuck,” he says. He’s silent for a couple of seconds, and when Donghyuck doesn’t reply to that, hangs up. 

Donghyuck smiles. And, try as he might, he can’t shake the smile all day, even when he settles into his seat at whatever radio show they’re interviewing for today, and has to deal with a thousand of the same questions he’s been asked for the last few weeks. 

-

“Hyuck,” says Jaemin one day, a few weeks later. They’re all together, in the same room, waiting for a meeting with people from the record label (that had been pushed back half an hour, because _reasons_.)

“Hm,” says Donghyuck, not looking up from his phone. 

He can practically hear the eye roll. “Maybe look at me?” he asks. 

“Nah,” says Donghyuck. “I’m trying to explain to Mark’s _thick skull_ that—”

“Mark?” asks Jaemin. 

“Yeah, we were on tour with him?” says Donghyuck sarcastically. “Figured you might know who he was.” Jaemin sits down beside him. Donghyuck can see the look of disbelief on his face out of the corner of his eye, but isn’t sure what might have triggered it this time. “As I was saying, it’s like arguing with a fucking _brick wall_ —”

“ _Donghyuck,_ ” says Jaemin. “Dude.” Donghyuck puts his phone down at Jaemin’s tone, frowning in a silent question. In true peanut gallery fashion, Jeno and Renjun move closer too. “You come back from the tour all hung up from something after talking to Mark, you don’t tell any of us what it is so we don’t press, you write a fucking breakup album—don’t look at me like that, it _is_ a breakup album—and now you’re looking at your phone all lovesick and affectionate and I’m just confused as _fuck_ right now.”

“Lovesick?” Donghyuck repeats. “I’m not lovesick. And it’s not a breakup album, because you need to actually be dating someone to break up with them.” 

Jaemin blinks. “You—weren’t dating?” 

Jeno glances at Renjun in disbelief. “Did you—did you know that?”

“I—no, actually,” says Renjun. “I assumed they were together and just really bad at hiding it.”

“We weren’t,” says Donghyuck. “But—he told me he was in love with me. At the airport.”

“And you took him up on his offer because you were also hopelessly in love with him?” Jaemin asks. Donghyuck turns to him. “Hyuck, we’ve all known you for years. We can tell.”

“But if that’s what happened, why was Hyuck so…” Jeno trails off, gesturing vaguely. Renjun and Jaemin nod in recognition. 

“Because I turned him down,” says Donghyuck. “Told him I didn’t have any feelings for him.”

Three identical looks of disbelief turn to him. Jeno gapes. Renjun clears his throat first, and asks, “Literally _why would you do that_?”

“Because I thought I was going to fuck it up,” says Donghyuck. 

“ _I’m_ fucked up!” says Jeno. “Hyuck, this is ridiculous!” 

“You’re the one who said it took you years to learn how to deal with me,” says Donghyuck. “I didn’t want to subject Mark to that. What if I’m too much for him? It’s not like he knew what he’d be getting into.”

Jaemin and Renjun turn to Jeno. Renjun looks murderous, but Donghyuck’s not sure who that’s directed to. Jeno gapes. “ _When did I say that?_ ” And then, “ _Why_ would I ever say something so _stupid?_ ”

“In Paris,” says Donghyuck. “When me and Mark fought, and you came with me on a walk to give me a pep talk because someone had to, and—”

“I’m fucked up,” Jeno repeats. “This is—Renjun, _you_ tell him!”

Renjun exhales. “You know, we don’t try to console you when you’re upset because we feel obligated to.”

“I wasn’t upset,” says Donghyuck. “I was being a self-pitying bastard.”

“Because you were upset,” says Renjun. “And you lash out when you’re upset, because you don’t know how to deal with it.” Donghyuck blinks at him. “You know, Hyuck, the fact that we know you and we know how you click isn’t a burden on us, it’s part of being your _friend_.”

“Yeah,” says Jeno. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean that you were hard to be around, that I learned to _put up with you_ like it was some great big burden—Hyuck, you’re fucking fantastic, you know?”

Donghyuck blinks again. “I’m literally average.”

“Right,” says Jaemin. “Because _average_ people can write albums that top the charts and make people cry. Because _average_ people can engage that many people by just writing a few songs.”

“You’re all—exaggerating,” says Donghyuck. 

“I’m really not,” says Jaemin. “You know, it took us a while to know everything about how you work and how you tick, but that’s _normal_. And we were still your friends before we knew everything we know about you, but that’s because _we liked you_.”

Donghyuck swallows. “I—” he says. 

“You don’t need to say anything,” says Renjun. “But just—think about that for a while, okay?”

Donghyuck nods. He suddenly feels like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he picks up his phone and checks his messages. _no reply?_ says his latest message from Mark. _clearly i’ve won_.

_i was busy you asshole_ , Donghyuck replies. Then he hesitates, lifts his head, and says, “Wait, what were you saying about me being lovesick?” 

-

By the time the BRIT awards actually roll around, Donghyuck thinks he might be understanding. 

Honestly, he feels impossibly stupid. Because he’d done his best to make sure the cycle didn’t end up repeating itself, that he didn’t end up hopelessly crushing again. 

Except this is different. When Donghyuck texts Mark now, he doesn’t feel like he’s sinking into the emotional equivalent of quicksand—it lifts his mood, makes him feel lighter and a little bit more like he could brave the world. When Donghyuck talks to him on the phone, his heart seizes up a little, but the feeling of his heart thumping eagerly cancels it out and more. 

If anything, he’s almost happy that he’ll be seeing Mark again today. Lucas is nominated for Best International Male Artist, and is very likely to win it according to the betting odds, so he and Mark are performing their song together. 

Of course, he’s dreading it—seeing Mark again, in person. But no more than is healthy, he thinks. 

On the red carpet, he gets asked what feels like a hundred different question, and forces himself to smile politely through all the interviewers who try to spice up their questioning. (It’s like, you work for a shitty gossip magazine. Just ask the damn questions.)

“Who are you most excited to see perform tonight?” asks someone from some magazine. 

“Um,” says Donghyuck. “I’ve heard Lucas Wong is performing, with Mark—Mark Lee, and that’s something I’m looking forward to seeing.”

“You guys were on tour with Mark last year, weren’t you?” asks the interviewer. 

“Yeah,” says Donghyuck. “Yeah, it was pretty fun, so we’re all excited to see him again here as well.”

“And can you give us any hints about your performance?” asks the interviewer. 

“Ah,” says Donghyuck. “No, that would be telling.” They’re performing the third single from the album, the one that had topped the charts for three weeks and still floated around the top thirty after five months. He’d been against it because the song was far too personal and far too specific, until he realized that _all_ the songs they could perform were far too personal and far too specific.

Once they’re finally done with interviews, they head into the venue and, backstage, try to make sense of the seating chart. 

Something taps on Donghyuck’s shoulder. He turns around and looks at Mark, and smiles despite himself. He looks less thin than the last time he’d seen him, his hair is freshly bleached blonde, and he’s smiling that easy, confident smile that Donghyuck is now certain is a mask—but it’s a damn good one. 

It had fooled him for months into thinking Mark really was cool and secure and certain in everything he did, but he’s not falling for it now. Now, he wonders idly to himself what would happen if Mark pulled the mask back, and showed Donghyuck what was really underneath. He wants to know—and he doesn’t want the false version of Mark anymore, the one which is beautiful and untouchable and very much a lie. 

“Hi,” says Donghyuck. 

“Hey,” says Mark. 

“I like the hair,” says Donghyuck wryly, pointing at his own hair. 

Mark grins at him. “Thanks.” He nods at the other three. “Hey guys, how’s it going?”

“All good,” says Jeno. “Excited to see your performance, though.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s going to be good,” says Mark. “Well. Fingers crossed.” He laughs. “Good luck to you as well, assuming you’re performing and all.”

Jeno nods. “We’re performing _the song_ ,” he says. “The big one. The one everyone knows. It’s a lot of pressure.”

Mark nods. “I’m excited to hear it,” he says. 

Donghyuck laughs, and then the penny drops, and he blinks. “You—you haven’t heard it before?”

Renjun clears his throat. “Hyuck, we’re going to sit down,” he says, practically dragging Jeno and Jaemin away. Donghyuck hears him hissing at them down the corridor.

“You,” he says finally. “You—never listened to the album?”

Mark hesitates. He looks guilty, sheepish, extremely unsure. “It was—” he begins. “It was just. Everything that happened. It was too fresh.”

Donghyuck considers this. “But the album came out after we started talking again,” he points out. “So surely—surely you’d be over it by then.”

Mark is silent for a second. “Donghyuck—” he begins, and then falls silent again. 

“I don’t get it,” says Donghyuck blankly. “I—I don’t get it.”

Mark exhales. “You wouldn’t, would you?” he asks. Donghyuck opens his mouth to respond, and Mark shakes his head. “I need to—get seated. I’ll see you after the ceremony, Donghyuck.”

Donghyuck watches him disappear down the corridor, and has a nagging feeling that something is wrong, that he’s missing something glaringly obvious. 

-

They win an award, for the best group act, and Donghyuck gives a speech thanking everyone he can think of—Johnny, the assholes in corporate, Yeri, every sound engineer whose name he can think of, the girl whose dog had inspired their band name. It’s heartfelt enough, but a little insipid. 

It’s hard to care, though, especially when they step out for their interview, and it feels like they’re on top of the world from this little scrap of validation. 

-

During Mark and Lucas’s performance, Donghyuck taps Renjun on the shoulder and says, “Hey, should I be offended that Mark didn’t listen to our album?”

Renjun blinks at him. “You said you’d turned him down,” he says. “Maybe he didn’t want to listen to it when it came out—”

“We started talking before it came out,” says Donghyuck. “So he was over it by the time the album was released.”

“Did he say that?” asks Renjun. He sounds distinctly bored with the whole situation. “Did he ever say he was over it, or did he just push back those feelings and pursue a friendship with you anyway because he cared about you?”

Donghyuck stares at the table. “I don’t get it,” he says flatly. 

“You started a friendship with him when you were still in love with him,” says Renjun. “Because you liked him as a friend enough to let the cycle continue even though it hurt you.”

“No, I wasn’t still in love with him,” corrects Donghyuck. “I got over him, and then I got feelings for him again when I got to know him.”

“Did you?” asks Renjun, sounding distinctly like he didn’t believe him. “Or did you just repress those feelings and tell yourself you could ignore them if you needed to?” 

Donghyuck stares at the tablecloth, wondering vaguely how they were kept so clean. “Do you think they get new tablecloths for every event, or do they just aggressively clean the dirt out?”

Renjun sighs. “You know, that’s quite a poignant metaphor for your situation,” he says. “Maybe our third album can be called _New Tablecloths_.” Donghyuck finally looks away from the table in conclusion. “Do you think you established new feelings with every new thing you learned, or did you just aggressively clean the old ones out and replace them with new ones?”

It doesn’t make any sense, but somehow it does. Donghyuck considers this, and glances towards the stage. Mark finishes singing the second chorus, smiling brilliantly at the audience, and Donghyuck’s stomach drops as if he was on a pirate ship at an amusement park. 

“You might have a point,” he says finally. 

-

And then they perform. 

It’s a good one—they all know it, they all feel it. The vibrations from the audience radiate onto the stage, underneath Donghyuck’s feet as he sings. He feels like _he’s_ vibrating too, at his own rhythm, a tempo faster than any of the others he’s ever moved to. 

His head is spinning, too, and he’s breathless by the time he steps off the stage. It’s the first time, he thinks, that he’d ever performed _that_ song and left feeling happy and satisfied, rather than raw and open and bloody. 

“Hyuck, you’re an absolute gift,” says Jeno once they sit back down in their seats, awaiting the winners of the biggest awards of the night. 

He’s only half paying attention, though, looking for Mark among the tables. When he finally catches sight of him, he’s whispering something frantically to Lucas, and he looks—stunned, somewhat. Maybe. Or maybe Donghyuck was reading too much into it. 

Maybe he had gotten the message, though. He thinks back to what he’d said about the song, in that interview months ago. _It’s a physical response to that feeling when you desperately want to make amends but you know it’ll never happen._

Maybe it could happen. Maybe this was how. 

-

They win album of the year. 

It doesn’t sink in, not really, not until Jaemin yanks him out of his seat, and he hears the announcer say _this is Girls With Dogs’s second award at this year’s ceremony, and their first ever win of the album of the year award_.

It’s impossible, he thinks. There were—other nominees, there must have been. It’s absolutely fucking impossible, he hadn’t even prepared a speech, this was not happening—

He doesn’t even remember making it onto the stage, his head is spinning so much. “Oh my god,” he says into the microphone. “Wow, I—I never expected this, I didn’t even prepare a speech—I know everyone says that, but I swear, I genuinely didn’t prepare anything—”

The audience laughs. He exhales. “Wow. Okay. I’ve already thanked practically everyone there is to thank in my last speech, and the last thing anyone needs at the end of the night is another list of names of people they’ve never met, so I’ll talk instead about another person who was instrumental to this record being made, but who I haven’t credited yet.”

“When I wrote—when I wrote this album, I was in a weird point in my life where I was pushing everyone away from me, and it meant—it meant that I hurt someone I care about deeply, and who I loved a great deal. And so this album—and the songs on it—are an apology to that person before anything else, so this award has to be dedicated to them before anyone else, because without them this album wouldn’t exist. And I think they know who they are. I think _he_ knows who he is.”

His heart is racing. He’s on the biggest spike of adrenaline he’s ever had in his life, but when he glances to his side at Jeno’s face in his peripheral he looks like—well, he looks like he’d be cooing if they weren’t onstage at an awards ceremony. 

And he knows he’s going to be hit with a thousand phone calls once they get out of here, from news outlets trying to get a statement to every other person from the company asking him _why_ , but it’s hard to care. He can’t see Mark, the lights are too bright, but he hopes—he hopes Mark got the message. 

-

The post-speech interview, as he expects, is a fucking mess. 

It’s hard to even _make his mouth work_ , not after spouting all of that on stage—he’s suppressing fits of laughter with every question. 

“Donghyuck, what you said in your speech—is this you coming out?”

“Sure,” he says. “Call it what you want, I guess.”

“Donghyuck, can you give us any information on this person?”

“Nope,” he answers. Jaemin snorts, not at all inconspicuously. 

“Donghyuck, are you going to be more forthcoming about your personal life or is this a one-time thing?”

“Frankly, I didn’t even know I was going to say all of that until I got on stage,” he answers. 

“Donghyuck, do you think that person you were talking about saw your speech?”

“Well, I should hope so,” he says. “I didn’t go through all those dramatics for nothing, you know.”

-

The door to their dressing room slams open so loudly it might as well have come off its hinges, and Donghyuck barely has time to look before Mark crosses the room. 

“Did you mean it?” he asks breathlessly. 

Donghyuck doesn’t need to ask for more information. “Yes,” he says. “Every word.”

“And the song—” says Mark. 

“For you,” says Donghyuck. “All of it. The whole album, the song I wrote in Paris—everything, all of it, it’s all for you.” Mark stares at him blankly. Donghyuck hesitates, and then leans forward to press his mouth against Mark’s. 

Mark hesitates for a second, and then kisses back. Donghyuck could’ve laughed, if his mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied, if his arms weren’t winding their way around Mark’s waist. _Finally_ , he thinks. _Finally, finally, finally._

Mark breaks away. “Donghyuck—” he says. 

“Please tell me I didn’t severely misread the situation,” Donghyuck blurts. 

Mark blinks at him owlishly, and then laughs softly. “No, no you didn’t—” he exhales. “No. I just. I like you so much.”

“I love you,” says Donghyuck. Mark’s eyes widen. “And I’m sorry—I’m sorry I pushed you away and all of that. I was—scared that it’d all go south and that you’d hate me and all of that shit.”

“I wouldn’t,” says Mark. 

“You say that,” says Donghyuck. “But maybe it will. Maybe we will break up. But I can’t—we can’t—we _shouldn’t_ push away shit we want on the off-chance that it might go to shit.”

Mark stares at him, wide-eyed and soft around the edges, and any sense of composure in Donghyuck’s heart melts away with one look. “I love you too,” he says. “I—Hyuck, I’ve wanted to say that for so _long_ —”

Donghyuck laughs shakily. He doesn’t know where the others have gone—maybe they’re here, maybe Renjun pulled them out to give them their privacy, but he finds that he really doesn’t care. Let everyone hear. He’d shout it from every rooftop in London if he could. Instead, he just leans forward, presses his forehead against Mark’s. 

Mark laughs. “I’m in the country for three more days,” he says. “We could—I don’t know, have a drink together or something. Maybe now.”

“There’s the afterparty,” says Donghyuck. 

“Fuck the afterparty,” says Mark. 

“There’s the tabloids,” says Donghyuck. 

“Fuck them, too,” says Mark. 

“I don’t think you know how vicious English tabloids can be,” says Donghyuck warningly. 

“I don’t _care_ ,” says Mark softly. “Right now, the only think I do know is how I love you, and I want to fucking _date_ you.” He hesitates. “You want to, right?”

“Oh my god,” says Donghyuck. “ _Yes_. Yes, I want to. God, just—I want to be your goddamn _boyfriend_.”

Mark smiles at him, and it knocks the air out of his lungs again and again. “I’ve never dated an album of the year winner,” he says. 

“Let this be your first, then,” says Donghyuck. 

“And last,” says Mark. 

He says it with such certainty that Donghyuck can’t even argue, or make some quip about how there’s no such thing as forever, or even find it in him to disagree. Instead, he just slides his hand into Mark’s and squeezes softly.

“And last,” he repeats. 

It sounds like a promise. And more than that, it sounds like a _beginning_. 

_epilogue._

**Lee Donghyuck, frontman of Britain’s biggest pop-rock band, spills on his band’s new album, living up to expectations, and his newfound happiness**

**By Seulgi Kang  
26th July 2021**

Girls With Dogs are practically on top of the world right now, but when Lee Donghyuck walks into the room, the only thing that might tip you off is the leather jacket and the cool air of effortless charisma that seems to follow him. 

In 2017, Girls With Dogs’s debut album, _She Had A German Shepherd_ , became the year’s biggest hidden gem. In 2019, their sophomore album, _It All Started In Barcelona_ , soared to the top of the charts in multiple countries, and won countless accolades, awards, and places on best-of-the-year lists—including a first-place position on _The Velvet_ ’s list. Now, their third album, _New Tablecloths_ , is the most awaited album of the third quarter, set to be released on August 2nd. And all of this before he turns twenty-three. 

A week ahead of its release, Donghyuck sat down with me, _The Velvet_ ’s music correspondent, for an exclusive interview about the inspirations behind the album, the pros and cons of success, and his band’s new sound.

> **Of course, it’s impossible not to mention the success of _It All Started In Barcelona_ , so I’ll start with that. Did you expect it?**
> 
> Fuck, not at all. (Laughs) No, that was the most unbelievable thing that’s ever happened. That album was—well, honestly, I thought people would get two minutes in and stop listening, so everything that came out of it was utterly unbelievable. 
> 
> **Can you talk a little about the process that went into this third album?**
> 
> My last album, I wrote when I was in a weird kind of in-between place in my life, and so I think it shows in the lyrics—there isn’t really a song on that album that’s really happy or uplifting, so I guess it’s really obvious. (Laughs) But for this one—well, I started writing this on the road, when we were touring, after we’d won our awards for it, and of course my life was really in another weird place, but it was a kind of place where it felt like I was on top of the world, you know? So it’s a lot more upbeat, in the sound and the lyrics, even though it’s just as honest and raw as the last one. 
> 
> **That’s something we all noticed, too, with all the singles you’ve released in anticipation. It’s a very different sound to your last one.**
> 
> Oh, absolutely. My boyfriend says we need to find a signature sound, but I’d really rather not be known for songs that make people want to walk into oncoming traffic. (Laughs) All my songs are super personal, and I find it really hard to write something I’m not feeling at the time. The songs on _Barcelona_ are from a place of loneliness and repression and all of that, but the songs on this one are written after just—good news after good news after good news, and I’m a lot happier now than I was back then. The first record’s very teen-angst, the second’s just really miserable, and this one—this one’s hopeful, I’d say, and I hope that feeling can touch people who related to the second album, too. Like—it can get better. 
> 
> **Do you ever feel uncomfortable listening to those songs anymore, since they’re so personal?**
> 
> Oh, fuck, all the time. But at the same time it’s like—the person who wrote _German Shepherd_ was an angry secondary school student, the person who wrote _Barcelona_ was lonely and heartbroken, and neither of them really feel like me anymore even though at the time both of those albums were—therapeutic. And everytime I sing those songs it feels like I’m just paying homage to all those old versions of myself who wrote them. It’s a really bittersweet feeling, I think, but that’s inevitable, and whatever awkwardness I feel now is nothing compared to the relief once they’re out there in the world for the first time. 
> 
> **And what do you think the reception will be for this one?**
> 
> Man, I don’t even know. I think the hardest thing with this one is the constant feeling that people will have fallen out of love with us, as a band, because we aren’t really the same relatable scrappy teenagers that we were. And I know a lot about my life right now is—not really something a lot of people can relate to, but I hope that the honesty in the album is still something people respond to, because I know the raw honesty is what drew a lot of people to the first two. And everything in this album is painfully honest.
> 
> **So you think it’ll live up to the expectations?**
> 
> Of course, there’s always going to be people who don’t like it, but even though the songs are a bit happier we’re still the same band. And even if absolutely everyone hates it—Jeno, who’s the bassist, he always says to write for the art and not for the charts. (Laughs) Which is kind of a hilarious sentiment, because of course we’re doing this for ourselves, but it’s always nice to hear it from people that they felt something from listening to our music. And I hope people will still feel something from these songs, because they’re just as personal and raw and cathartic.
> 
> **That rawness is definitely something that’s obvious in all your songs, and the singles so far have been no exception.**
> 
> (Laughs) Honestly, it’s almost more embarrassing to get these out there. The other albums—they’re all personal, but in a way that everyone can relate to, because I think sadness and anger and loneliness and resentment are really universal human emotions. It’s almost harder to bare your soul to the world when you’re happy, because it almost feels like you’re setting yourself up to be a target, you know? 
> 
> **Of course, this isn’t really about the album at all, but you’ve mentioned a certain _someone_ in your personal life in a few interviews this promotional cycle.**
> 
> Oh, god, yeah. My sister reckons it’s made me so much less relatable now, but he’s been a really great constant source of support over the last two years or so, and I’m really ridiculously in love. (Laughs) And he’s inevitably going to read this interview and laugh at me because of how fucking corny it is to say that. 
> 
> **Do you have any plans on being a bit more transparent about your personal life? Or is that something you’d rather keep quiet?**
> 
> I’ve always believed that it kind of takes away from the persona of me as a singer if people know every little thought that went into every little lyric. And anyway, we’re both pretty private people, and we’re both very independent and determined when it comes to our own lives, too, so we don’t really have any plans to be shouting it from the rooftops anymore than we need to. And honestly, this whole album is just a shit ton of shouting it from the rooftops, and of course he’s heard all the songs except for one, so…
> 
> **Except for one?**
> 
> Yeah, God— (Laughs) There’s a song on the album that I know people are going to like, because it’s pretty damn good if I do say so myself, but I don’t think I even want to perform it on tour because it feels like I recorded a love letter or something and sent it out into the world. I don’t even want to be in the same _room_ as him the first time he hears it. 
> 
> **Of course, I loved your last two albums, so I’m immensely excited to hear this one.**
> 
> I’m excited for it to get there. It’s not perfect, no album ever is, but it’s definitely _something_ , and I’m proud of it. It’s like a product of where I am in my life right now, and where I am is pretty damn good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! 
> 
> i’m no longer active on twitter but if you liked it feel free to leave a comment~
> 
> i hope this was a satisfying conclusion, and that this entire fic was enjoyable for everyone!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as possible, but i can't make any promises because next week is my last week at school before christmas break~
> 
> find me on twitter [here](http://twitter.com/wannatheworid) and curiouscat [here](https://curiouscat.me/hyeashope).


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